


I fall when you leave

by rudesunyoung



Category: BLACKPINK (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Panic Attacks, Parallel Universes, Romance, Self-Harm, implied eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-05-18 16:04:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19337887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudesunyoung/pseuds/rudesunyoung
Summary: When Lisa is killed in a car accident, Jennie falls apart. It starts in stages. First, she refuses to go to sleep. Then, she isolates herself. Lastly, she begins to dissociate.





	1. the aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in my head for a while and I finally managed to get it out on an actual document, so without further ado, a time traveling au that i hope you'll enjoy.

_“I can’t believe you still have these.”_

_Lisa peeks her head out from the kitchen, a wooden spoon in one hand and tomato sauce smeared across her chin. She raises an eyebrow at Jennie until she sees her Spongebob boxers being held up by a finger, then she breaks out into a loud laugh._

_“They’re my favorite!”_

_“They’re embarrassing. That’s what they are.”_

_“Shut the fuck up. They are not!”_

_“Yes, they are!”_

 

Jennie isn’t sure of how long she stands there in front of the dresser looking down at her underwear. Everything is still there. It’s Tuesday, June 18th, three weeks since the funeral and yet- nothing in this room has changed. She blinks again, somewhat disbelieving that she’s staring back at the same animated design that she had spent years ribbing Lisa about. All of her underwear is here. When she moves to close the drawer, she physically cannot bring herself to shut it. Not yet, at least. Not right now. 

She swallows a sigh that wants to work its way out. Lisa’s parents had stayed with Jennie after the funeral, helping her pack away things that they would take back to Thailand and offering her comfort the way any parent would to their child’s partner. Jennie had appreciated the sentiment but there were just some things that she couldn’t let go, things that she couldn’t let leave their apartment. 

Her shoes were still placed neatly beside each other at the bottom of the closet. Her blazers were still in their dry cleaning bags at the end of the rack because Lisa was too lazy to get rid of them. Her shirts were still hanging up in color coordination on the opposite side of Jennie’s clothes. Her camera equipment was still sitting in the spare room that they had converted to a studio. Her stuffed animals were still arranged on the windowsill and the books that she had started reading last summer, were stacked in a pile in the corner of the room. 

And then there was the underwear. Jennie looked down again and saw Lisa ripping the package open when she came home from Wal-Mart, excitedly telling Jennie that she had bought the last one. 

She saw her walking out of the bedroom with her hair all over her face and crust still in the corner of her eye at eight in the morning. 

She saw her laid out on the ottoman, one of her legs hanging off the side and her boxers peeking out from underneath the blanket as she watched some Thai reality show and attempted to translate it to Jennie.

She saw her doing laundry and hanging them up on the clothesline as the sun shone on the balcony and dripped over their fabrics. 

Jennie swallowed again and it was like drinking bleach. It burned the inside of her throat and made her eyes sting. She could feel the water well up in her eyes the longer she stared at Spongebob’s face smiling back at her. It felt like he was mocking her like he knew that Lisa was dead and it was funny.

_Close the drawer._

It was in the back of her head, something telling her to close it and forget about it, but she couldn’t. Even if she shut the drawer, she knew it would still be in there. That when she went to take a shower, or started on dinner, or went to check her emails that the boxers would still be there. Day after day. Night after night. 

She needed to see it, though. She needed to see with her own eyes that Lisa had yet again left another part of herself for her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jennie moved around the apartment finding other little things that had belonged to Lisa but hadn’t left their place either. 

Her photo albums were lined up at the bottom of the bookcase, their identical red spines displaying the month that Lisa had taken the photos. Jennie had sat on the hardwood floor for thirty minutes, staring back at them while the news played in the background. When she finally pulled one out, the rest of the albums tumbled to the side, the noise making Jennie frowned as she tried to stand them up again. 

January. 

Jennie runs her hand over the cover feeling the soft material and watching as her hand shakes when she opens it. The first page is blank, the page after that is Lisa’s handwriting with the word _‘portrait’_ scrawled across the center. Her fingers continue to shake as she flips through the pages; imagining how Lisa had sat in her studio and meticulously arranged them. She thinks of the way her fingertip would have glided along the top of the page and how she would have cursed if the alignment wasn’t correct before starting all over again.

Jennie looks through all the albums and by the time she’s done, the entire living room is covered in darkness. The floor to ceiling windows reflect the city lights that are burning outside. Jennie sits on the floor a little bit longer, waiting for the blood to travel back to her legs before she places the albums back on the shelf and goes to the kitchen in search of something to eat.

 

_“The way you consume ramen worries me.”_

_Jennie looks over as she dumps the noodles into a small ceramic pot of boiling water. The heat warms her face and she smiles when Lisa wordlessly hands her the seasoning packet and then passes her the plate of chopped green onions._

_“Then why did you set the table with two bowls?”_

_Lisa splutters, her mouth opening before she closes it and then opens it again. “I- well, I mean a girl’s got to eat too!”_

_Jennie laughs, pushing Lisa out of the way so she can open the fridge and grab down an egg. “So then stop complaining. You like my ramen.”_

_Lisa jabs her in the side and doesn’t stop until Jennie almost splashes her with scalding hot soup as she transfers the pot to the table and the younger girl complains about third-degree burns._

There’s nothing but containers in the fridge. There’s tteokbokki, seaweed soup, dumplings, jjajangmyeon, kimchi stew, rice, and eggroll. It’s been three weeks since the funeral and the amount of food makes it seem like it happened yesterday. Jennie opens the containers, looks at the mold growing on the rice cakes and the sour smell of the seaweed soup as it sloshes in the container. She seals it back up and slams the fridge door shut. Maybe if she leaves everything, she can pretend that the food is fine- that everything is fine.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The ping from her laptop wakes Jennie at 6:13 in the morning. It’s still dark out, the sky a bleak grey color and the city just beginning to stir awake when Jennie sits up on the couch. Her neck is stiff and her back is sore, most likely from the way she slept last night. She can barely see anything, her vision blurry and her brain still having trouble with waking itself up.

When she grabs her glasses out from between the couch cushions, she fixes them on her face and stares at her screensaver, the one of Lisa and her during Christmas with matching Santa hats on their heads and a cute reindeer nose that Lisa had wrestled on her. She clicks on the notification and sees a message from Chaeyoung with an image of her holding up a cup of iced coffee.

**From: Chae 6:11 AM**

Getting coffee at your favorite place. Wanna meet up?

She flexes her joints and wills herself to think of something polite, something that won’t sound rude when she declines the offer.

**From: Jennie 6:18 AM**

No, thank you. I’m really tired

It’s not a lie exactly, she is tired. Tired of people. Tired of pretending that it doesn’t hurt to breathe whenever she takes a deep breath. Tired of looking around the apartment and finding things that remind her of Lisa. She’s just tired.

**From: Chaeyoung 6:20 AM**

Pleaseeeee. No one has seen you in like weeks! I miss you!

**From: Jennie 6:22 AM**

I just don’t feel like it. I’m tired, Chae.

**From: Chaeyoung 6:24 AM**

What if I came to see you? You wouldn’t even have to leave the apartment!

**From: Jennie 6:25 AM**

Why can’t you just leave me alone?

_Fuck._

“Fuck,” she frowns. 

The three dots appear on the screen before disappearing and then reappearing a few minutes later. Jennie knows that she was too harsh, that it wasn’t alright to talk to anyone, let alone Chaeyoung like that.

**From: Chaeyoung 6: 31 AM**

I’m sorry. I won’t bother you. 

Jennie sighs loudly, pressing the heel of her hand into her eyes until it feels like she won’t start crying.

“Fuck!” she shouts and abruptly kicks the table, the leg getting caught on the rug as her laptop jostled from the force.

“Fuck!”

It feels like she can’t breathe. It hurts, it hurts a lot. She stands up, her bones protesting at the sudden movement and her head pounds from the distance between the couch and the floor underneath her feet. When she starts pacing, her fingers start trembling as the shaking travels down her wrists and into her arms until she drops down to the floor. Before she could stop herself, she begins to cry. Sharp and heavy sobs rack throughout her body until she can hear the sound of it coming out of her mouth. Hot tears sting the back of her eyes just as she looks down and sees droplets fall into her palm. It should scare her that she’s able to break down like this so easily but it doesn’t- not anymore. 

While she’s curled into herself on the floor, she thinks of the boxers in the drawer, of the albums that Lisa never got to finish, of the food that was rotting inside the fridge like the inside of Jennie’s own body. She thought about Chaeyoung; Chaeyoung who held her hand while she waited inside the hospital to hear about Lisa’s condition. Who slept in her apartment the night her girlfriend died and held Jennie so close that it felt like she wouldn’t shatter into pieces. 

She doesn’t deserve Chaeyoung, not anymore.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Lisa’s hand slips underneath the waistband of her sweats, her fingers gliding along the skin at her hip when Jennie wakes up. She murmurs something, something under her breath and unintelligible and feels the younger girl pull her closer, her hair brushing against her nose with that familiar coconut shampoo._

_Sunlight bathes the bedroom in soft muted shades of yellow and when Jennie opens her eyes, she knows that Lisa is looking at her, she can feel it. Her gaze is intense, soft and simmering like this is the first time that she’s ever seen Jennie in the morning._

_“Good morning,” she whispers, her voice deep and rough with traces of sleep._

_She leans over to press a kiss against the edge of her mouth, Jennie murmuring ‘stinky mouth’ underneath her breath and laughing when Lisa pinched the skin at her hip._

_They share lazy kisses, Jennie simply pressing her lips onto Lisa’s, too tired to get into it but also taking delight in the soft skin of Lisa’s lips, the way she breathes through her nose when Jennie cards her fingers through her hair, and the fingers that run along her skin._

_“Do you want breakfast?” she chuckles against her lip._

 

Jennie is losing weight. She can tell just by looking at herself. She stands in front of the full-length mirror leaning against the wall, the one that Lisa had strung fairy lights on and Jennie had never gotten around to taking them off. There are stickers on the wood, ranging from corporate brands, silly catchphrases, and cartoon characters from that one show that Lisa and Jennie always watched on Saturday morning. 

In the mirror, she sees her reflection and she hates it. She hates the way her hip bones jut out. She hates the way her skin looks so pale, void of the usual flush underneath her tan complexion. She hates that her cheekbones stick out more than usual, the roundness of her cheeks slowly disappearing. She has bags underneath her eyes, from nights that she had stayed up either wandering around the apartment, smoking on the balcony, or sitting in front of the TV until her eyes became too tired to keep themselves open. 

Her figure, that thing that looks back at her, disgusts her and she knows that it would disgust Lisa too. That’s what makes it worse, ironically. That her body, the body that Lisa had kissed from head to toe, had held so tenderly, had cared for as if it were her own, had now withered away to this. Jennie stares down at her torso, hesitantly reaching up to feel the bone underneath her skin, her fingertips outlining each and every single one.

She yanks on her clothes as fast as she can; simply putting on a pair of dark slacks, a white blouse with a sweater over it and her Nikes. When she turns back to the mirror, she can’t see her body anymore, at least not the parts that she dislikes nor the parts that would make other people raise their eyebrows. After brushing her hair into a ponytail and putting some light concealer and foundation on to hide the bags, Jennie covers the mirror with a sheet from the linen closet and forgoes the kitchen. 

Breakfast just doesn’t seem appetizing anymore.

 

Jennie hates riding the subway but she doesn’t have her driver’s license and the only car that they had was one that Lisa was killed in. One reason that she hates public transportation is the crowd. She has to push past people as she takes the stairs down to the platform and she almost drops her messenger bag when someone roughly bumps into her. People are bustling throughout the station; some commuters waiting in line for the next train with their briefcases in one hand and their cellphone in the other. There are tourists with their luggage at their feet and staring in awe at the crowded station and the lively storefronts with clothing, jewelry, and sneakers laid out on mats along the floor and on tables. 

Jennie walks toward the line where she’ll wait for the next train and sets her bag down so she can tie her shoelaces and dab away the sweat that's starting to accumulate on her neck and under her nose. She feels sticky and claustrophobic on the platform and the sound of voices, of people moving and shouting and revolving around her, almost makes her nauseous before the automated voice operator is speaking over the intercom. 

“Two minutes until subway F will be arriving at the station.”

It feels like forever but Jennie knows that logically, it’s only been two minutes. When the subway arrives, it rushes past at a blazing speed, the force rattling the tiles underneath Jennie’s sneakers. The brakes squeal loudly and the wind that travels with it further pushes the nausea that Jennie had felt up her airway. 

The doors slide open on a hiss when the train stops and Jennie wastes no time boarding and finding a single seat next to the window. When other passengers start to fill in and take their seats or grab on to the bar overhead, Jennie takes a deep breath and closes her eyes as she lays her head against the glass.

 

“Jennie, you look great! How are you holding up?”

Her boss, Park Jinyoung, has always been a rather enthusiastic and outgoing man. This meant that he was always perpetually happy or excited about something. He didn’t dwell on uncomfortable things too long or wallow in misery like half of the population. That was one reason why Jennie was beginning to hate him. He was too happy, he was too smiley, he was too optimistic about everything. 

Jennie wanted people to feel what she felt. She wanted people to look the same way she did. She wanted everyone to have trouble sleeping, to have the inability to eat, to want to cry at odd hours of the day because nothing made sense anymore. She didn’t want people to move on because she couldn’t; she couldn’t move on in a world where Lisa didn’t exist. 

“I’m fine,” she nodded. 

She wanted to tell him that he could go fuck himself. That she was doing about as well as someone who had just buried their partner nearly seven weeks ago. 

She didn’t say that, though. She didn’t have the energy to cause a scene or to deal with the fallout of being fired. 

Jinyoung must have picked up on her clipped response because he pressed his lips into a thin line and stared at her for a long uncomfortable second before gesturing behind himself. 

“Well, that’s good. That’s good. The office has been lonely without you, everyone was excited about your return.”

Jennie tuned him out in favor of following him as he leads the way up to their office space. The Seoul Times was a small publishing company that housed novels, literary and cinema criticism, personal essays, podcasts, and writing workshops in the city. The building had expanded over the months due in part to a large donation the previous year and a steadily growing subscription base. Jennie looked at the numbers as they passed by in the elevator, climbing higher and higher until they reached the seventeenth floor and Jennie felt like she might actually pass out. 

Everything still looked the same. 

There was the reception desk that Hayi worked at, a small earpiece in as she answered calls and typed out emails seamlessly as if it were second nature. The lobby space that was furnished with a simple oak wood coffee table and a long mustard yellow chair with coffee colored pillows to decorate. The cubicles hummed with productivity and life. Some people were talking over their dividers, playing music from the radio set up in the back, or flipping through manuscripts and typing out long-form pieces that would later be published on the website. Jennie migrated past her colleagues, her skin prickling in a strange sense of anxiety as people waved at her, some shot sympathetic glances, and others ignored her. 

She would have preferred to be ignored altogether. 

“Everything is just like you left it,” Jinyoung said, rounding the corner before coming to a stop at her workstation. 

But everything wasn’t how she had left it. There were flowers covering her entire desk and a stack of cards next to the monitor that looked like they had taken some time to be picked out. Everything was like a reminder to her. Over and over again it felt like there were things that needed to make itself known in her presence, that needed to remind her that she had lost someone and that people knew that she lost someone. 

“Thank you Jinyoung-ssi,” Jennie murmured, wanting to end their conversation sooner rather than later. 

“This is very thoughtful of you all. Make sure you tell the team that I appreciate it.”

Jinyoung beamed at her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder to squeeze it before he was nodding again and leaving with a quick wave. 

“Will do!” he called over his shoulder. 

Jennie had stared at the flowers for a while before she set her things down on the floor and carefully went about moving the bouquets out of the way. As she uncovered more of her workspace, she began to see more of her old life spill out in front of her. There was a picture frame of Lisa on her desk, one was of Lisa sleeping with her head in Jennie’s lap. A Hello Kitty bobblehead that Lisa had brought back from Japan when she won it in an arcade game against her mother. Then, that mug that was slightly chipped from Lisa dropping it on the stairwell at the apartment.

It was like stepping back into a different time but yet still having the memories of a past life. The Jennie that had placed all of these things on the desk wasn’t the same Jennie that was sitting here with her messenger bag still over her shoulder and her knuckles turning white from her grip on the strap.

 

Sometime later, Jennie managed to finish up some work that she had come in to do. She sent back a few manuscripts, typed out an email to a company executive, and ran through some long-form submissions before editing them and sending it back. People lingered, people always lingered near her cubicle. They either tried to start a small conversation, offer condolences, or check on how she was doing. A small smile and a simply worded response was usually enough to get the job done and by her lunch break, Jennie went up to the next floor, locked herself in the handicapped stall and cried until her break was over. 

Just before Jennie turned off her laptop and started gathering her things, a few of her colleagues came around with their second round of condolences and she was so pissed that she was hearing this and that it wouldn’t stop anytime soon, that she just stopped responding. At seven-thirty, she took all of the flower arrangements and went down to the basement to throw them in the garbage chute. After three trips, she gathered her things and left the office, her head fuzzy and her stomach rumbling as she decided to forgo the subway and just catch a cab back home.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“This food is bad.”

Jennie’s mother, Gooyeun, moves around the kitchen as loudly as possible; opening up the fridge, tossing things in the trash, and piling empty containers and dishes in the sink. 

It’s Wednesday, July 31 and Jennie can already feel a headache coming on not only from the stress of her mother being here but also from the loud noises she’s making and the rumbling in her stomach that is begging for her to eat something. 

She pinches the bridge of her nose when her mother walks into the living room with a large styrofoam cup and sets it down in front of her on the table. 

“Drink this. Then help me clean out the fridge.”

She doesn’t wait to watch Jennie pop open the lid, or to see her peek inside, or to see her close it back up and set it down. Instead, Jennie just listens to her move about, probably filling the sink with water and soap for the dishes to soak. Probably taking out wipes to clean the counters off and pouring out the carton of almond milk that had expired two weeks ago. 

Jennie pushes up and walks into the kitchen, standing idly by the island when her mom briefly glances up before turning back to the fridge.

“Did you know that the food here is bad?”

She pulls out a plastic bag and unties it so she can grab the box and pop it open. The eggrolls have turned brown and even from a few feet away, she can smell the odor that follows along with it. She swallows something heavy in her throat but doesn’t say anything when her mother opens up the trash bin and tosses it inside. 

“What have you been eating if all of this is bad?”

She tosses another box in the trash without even opening it and Jennie wants to laugh at how mechanical she moves. At how just by looking at the plastic containers, she can already tell that none of it is any good. 

“Don’t answer that,” she mutters under her breath. “I’m looking at you and I can tell it’s nothing.” 

She should be angry at her mother for speaking so bluntly towards her. She should be angry that her mom sees what she is so desperately trying to hide- that’s she falling apart. That her clothes feel loose on her, that her head hurts more in the morning and that when the sun sets and the apartment is bathed in darkness, that she stays up all night. That she can’t fathom going to sleep because if she closes her eyes, she’s afraid that she’ll dream of Lisa. She can’t eat, she can’t sleep; she can’t even clean out her own damn fridge because it hurts too much. 

Everything hurts. 

When all the food is thrown in the trash, her mom goes about wiping the inside of it down. She cleans the shelves, the pull out drawers, and the egg carton case with a box of Lysol wipes and a rag. She cleans like it’s her own house like this is her fridge and she can do whatever she wants. Jennie wants her to leave and she wants to tell her to stop cleaning and changing things around like it will make everything suddenly better. She wants that rotten food in the fridge, she wants the almond milk, she wants the little apple juice boxes that Lisa was obsessed with and the spaghetti sauce that was halfway finished. 

Her mother was doing this all wrong. All of it. When she was done cleaning, she set the products on the counter and moved over to grab dishes full of food that she had made at home and stock them in the fridge. The longer she stared at her fridge and the longer she saw the space slowly being swallowed up by the different packages and containers full of food, the more nauseous it made her. 

“If you’re not going to do anything, go sit down and finish your drink that I made you,” she said over her shoulder. 

“I’m not thirsty,” she murmured and turned on her heels, bypassing the living room to go into her bedroom. 

At least in her room, it was like stepping back into the past. Nothing had changed in here, it was almost as if Lisa was still here even if she wasn’t _physically_ here. Her things were still in the same place, her skin care products were still on the dresser, all of her caps were hanging on the makeshift rack that she had assembled from IKEA. It gave Jennie the comfort that she couldn’t find in any other area of the apartment. 

She drew the curtains close and laid down on her side to face the window. She wasn’t even aware of how long she had spent in bed until she heard the door crack open slightly and bathe the walls in a sliver of light. She didn’t turn around, knowing that her mom would come over or say whatever it is she had to say by the door. Light footsteps padded across the carpet until the bed dipped down at the sudden weight behind her. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on taking deep breaths as the silence stretched between them. 

When a hand came up to card through her hair, she flinched away, but the movement didn’t stop her mother. She continued to run her fingers through her locks and smooth back strands that had curled themselves around her face. Jennie could feel the cold press of her rings against her scalp and it reminded her of when she was a little girl and she would lay her head in her mother’s lap so she would rub her head.

 

_“Mommy, pleaseee,” she would whine._

_“Don’t you have something that you should be doing right now?”_

_“Nope!”_

_Her mother would narrow her eyes at her but would relent, maneuvering Jennie until she was comfortable and her head was resting on top of her thighs before she would begin carding her fingers through her hair. If she wasn’t paying attention, she would fall asleep to the sound of her mother humming underneath her breath, or the TV playing, or the AC that would blow across her face as the summer stretched on outside of their house._

 

Now, Jennie felt like this was being done more so out of pity rather than comfort and it made a nasty feeling rise in her throat. No one could do anything right now that would bring her comfort- no one. 

Jennie wanted to be left alone. She wanted to be left alone to deal with her own life. She wanted her fridge left alone. She wanted her room to be a space for her to lay down by herself. She just wanted to be alone. Her mother, unfortunately, wasn’t like that, though. She didn’t do so well with silence or with absence. She had inserted herself in Jennie’s life like Lisa hadn’t even passed. She kept bringing food over. She kept cleaning different rooms in the apartment every time she visited. She kept picking her up to go for a walk at the park near her place or doing her laundry and hanging it back up as if Jennie was ever to change or go out or wear anything that wasn’t sweatpants and a t-shirt. 

That day after Lisa had died, her mother took her back to their home in Cheongdamn-dong, thinking that it was a good idea that she be surrounded by family and around people that cared about them both. She was too numb to protest so she let herself be consoled by her father and family friends. She let herself be fed food and let her mom run a bath for her in a tub that she had outgrown so much that her knees broke the surface of the water. She stayed at home for a week and even after the funeral and after Lisa’s parents came down to Cheongdamn-dong to be with her, her mother’s presence never waned. 

It was almost like she knew that if she didn’t physically seek out Jennie herself, that she would likely never see her daughter again. 

“Just drink the juice, alright?” she whispered. 

“Okay,” she didn’t believe herself and she doubted that her mom did either. 

Her fingers continued to card through her hair until she ran her knuckles down the column of her neck. 

“I know it hurts,” she murmured. “I know. You may not think I do, but I promise you that I do. I know you loved her- was crazy about her even- but Lisa wouldn’t want to see you like this.”

Jennie violently pushed her mother’s hand off of her and scooted away from her, as close as she could to the edge of the bed. Even after that though, her mother continued to talk. 

“I know you don’t want to hear this, either,” she sighed. 

“Then why are you still here?” she bit out. 

Her mother paused and she didn’t have to turn around to know that her mother was probably shaking her head in that slow way that she did when she was disappointed. 

“I’m here because I care. I care about you and I care about what’s happening to you. You don’t eat, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks, Park Jinyoung-ssi is calling me to know if you’re okay and your friends- Chaeyoung- she texts me every day because you won’t talk to her. Lisa died that day and I know it hurts, I know you’re upset. I know that you miss her, believe me, I know that. I also know that you loved her and if you could have stopped it, you would have. You would do anything for that girl but you couldn’t stop it. You couldn’t have saved her, it was out of your control. _Lisa_ died that day, not you, so stop acting as if you did!”

It was as if someone had doused her in ice cold water or slapped her, Jennie wasn’t really sure which one would have been worse. But those words coiled around her heart and strangled it like someone was holding it in a vice and squeezing it with the pressure of a thousand hands. She closed her eyes and begged herself not to cry. She was tired of crying, she was tired of talking, she was just tired all over again. 

She was tired of her mother checking in on her. She was tired of her trying to take care of her as if she wasn’t a 24-year old woman. She was tired of her attempting to console Jennie as if she needed to hear that right now. 

“Get out,” she whispers and then clears her throat to say it more loudly. “Get out, _now_.”

“Jennie-” 

She almost wants to turn around to look at her face. She wants to see if she has that same pained expression she wore during the funeral, the one that hasn’t left her face since that day. She wants to see if she can inflict as much pain on her mother as she feels because it’s only fair. 

“I said GET OUT!”

She grabbed the pillow next to her head and flung it across the room, watching it smack into the wall and falling with a soft thump. 

Another long minute of silence passes before the bed shifts and settles back in place. She can still feel her mother behind her so she grabs the blankets and pulls them over her head. It’s hot and somewhat hard to breathe, but it’s better than looking at her mother’s shadow on the wall. 

“I’m sorry,” she hears her whisper. “I’m sorry, Jennie. I’ll call you later to check on you, okay? I love you and I-I’ll go.”

Her footsteps trail off to the door until she’s shutting it behind herself and Jennie waits until she hears her grab her things and the sound of the front door _beep_ before it clicks shut. Jennie doesn’t even realize that she’s crying until she feels the tears trickle into her hairline and the snot accumulate in her nose so she has to run her thumb underneath to wipe it away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**From: Jennie 9:35 PM**

I’m sorry about what I said to you. It wasn’t right and I hope you can forgive me. 

Jennie doesn’t expect Chaeyoung to answer her, it’s been three weeks since Chaeyoung asked her out for coffee and she’s spent every day swallowing down the regret that she’s felt. Her mom had sent her a few texts, some to check on her, others to tell her what the family was up to but Jennie couldn’t find it in herself to respond. 

Nonetheless, she’s caught off guard when her phone lights up with a notification and she wastes no time opening up her messages to click on Chaeyoung’s name.

**From: Chaeyoung 9:37 PM**

It’s okay! I forgive you, don’t worry. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I just missed you and wanted to see how you were doing.

Jennie sighs through her nose and scrubs at her eyes so she doesn’t start crying again.

**From: Jennie 9:38 PM**

It’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong. I was being a bitch and I appreciate it, i do. I’m just not ready, honestly, i don’t know if i’ll ever be

**From: Chaeyoung 9:40 PM**

Take your time, then. Just please send me a text every now and then so I know you’re alright, okay? Or even a picture?

Jennie doubted that she would send her a selfie- not with the way she looked. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this.

**From: Jennie 9:41 PM**

I will, thank you

**From: Chaeyoung 9:42 PM**

Love you

**From: Jennie 9:43 PM**

I love you too

Jennie sets her phone down on the small table that she has on the balcony. Leaning over the railing, she can see the streets in her quiet neighborhood. The alley cats that linger on the side of the road, the garbage can that’s knocked over the side, and the few people that walk pass talking on their cellphones or stepping out of their own place to take a smoke outside. 

She blinks into the darkness and adjusts her glasses before picking at the skin of her nail. Her fingers look gross from biting them and messing with the skin whenever she grew irritated. Her head still hurts but it’s a low throbbing in the back of her eyes instead of a full pounding like it usually is. She stares out at the sky before reaching back for a pack of cigarettes on the table and ripping it open to take one out. 

Although it's been a while, her fingers move with the motion as if they never forgot. She suspects that one just doesn’t forget how to smoke after they do it once no matter how long it’s been. She slips it in between her lips and covers it with one hand as she quickly lights it and stuffs the lighter back into her pocket. The first drag fills her chest with an uncomfortable amount of smoke and she holds it in for another second before blowing it out in front of her, watching as the smoke billows out before vanishing into the air. She takes a couple more drags of it, feeling the familiar ache in her chest and the taste of nicotine coat her tongue.

 

_“I hate when you smoke,” Lisa frowns._

_Jennie looks up where she’s fumbling with the pack to pull one out, the street is deserted and they’re leaning up against a convenience store after eating some ramen and sharing a beer. Her stomach is still warm and her cheeks are probably flush from the alcohol._

_The lights from the storefront flicker over them and bathes Lisa’s features in colors that soften her eyes. She’s frowning down at the cigarette between Jennie’s fingers and the older girl almost sticks it back in her pocket but she doesn’t._

_“It’s just one, I promise.”_

_She used to be worse, going through nearly a pack every three days but now she’s much better, taking one every other day or sometimes not for a week unless she was in the mood for a smoke. It was mostly due to Lisa, who hated the way her breath tasted when they kissed or complained to her about cutting her life short because she was going to get lung cancer or something._

_“Just one?” Lisa asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at her._

_“Just one,” Jennie laughed and put it between her lips before lighting it and taking a quick drag._

_Lisa frowned the entire time and dramatically held her nose while looking at her, to which Jennie only rolled her eyes and jabbed her in the side. When she finished the cigarette and put it out on the ground with her foot, she went back inside the store and got a small bottle of travel Listerine and a pack of gum before coming out. Lisa laughed at her when she gargled the mouthwash in front of her and threw the bottle in the trash before popping a piece of gum in her mouth. She chewed it obnoxiously, showing it to Lisa and the younger girl rolled her eyes before pulling her into her chest._

_“You’re so annoying,” she muttered._

_“If I’m so annoying, then why are you dating me?” she smirked._

_“Good point,” Lisa nodded and she laughed loudly when Jennie smacked her chest repeatedly before giving up._

_“Dick,”_

_“Love you,” she hummed and grabbed Jennie’s chin to tilt her head up so she could press a kiss to her mouth._

_“Minty fresh,” Lisa smiled against her lips._

_“Just the way you like it.”_

_Lisa nodded and Jennie muttered ‘dick' again underneath her breath before wrapping her arms around the other girl’s neck and deepening the kiss._

 

Jennie finishes five cigarettes before she has to throw up and she runs back inside the apartment, banging the door back in a rush to get to the bathroom before she falls to her knees and vomits into the toilet. Her mouth feels raw and her eyes sting but she sits by the toilet bowl, her cheek pressed against the cool glass until she feels like she won’t throw up if she were to stand up. 

After flushing the toilet and washing her hands, Jennie opens the medicine cabinet and pulls down her toothpaste and brushes her teeth in the dark.

 

 

* * *

 

 

August 24, 2019

Jennie stands off to the side, watching from afar as she spots Chaeyoung, Nayeon, Irene, and Heejin up ahead laying flowers on the ground. She didn’t think anyone would be up here today but then again, these were their friends- are still their friends- so it only makes sense that they would turn up to pay their respects. Jennie watches as Irene whispers something to Heejin, who nods her head and then reaches forward to tug on Chaeyoung’s elbow. 

She must have said something to them because all three of them nod before patting her on the back and walking off down the hill toward the car parked on the side of the road. Chaeyoung looks sad the longer Jennie stares at her, but that also makes sense because Chaeyoung is their closest friend. Before Jennie and Lisa had started dating, she had thought Chaeyoung and the younger girl were actually together because they seemed so close. When Lisa died, Chaeyoung was the only person that she could stand to be around because Jennie felt as if she knew the pain that she was going through and had felt the same way, if not, worse. 

Now, she didn’t want to be around her because she was ashamed of herself. She was ashamed of the way she looked and what Lisa’s death had done to her. Chaeyoung still looked the same as she did but with a sadness in her eyes that meant she wasn’t the same anymore. Jennie didn’t know how to look like that. She didn’t know how to look like her life was altogether even though she was physically, mentally, and emotionally falling apart. She didn’t know how to put a mask over herself. 

When Chaeyoung finally leaves, Jennie watches her wipe her face before walking off in the same direction that the other girls went. She doesn’t move from her spot until she sees the silver Audi pull out of the cemetery and merge into traffic. 

As she walks up to the rugged pathway, she tightens her jacket around her and holds the flowers against her chest, afraid that they might fall and become messed up. She passes by a few other plots all with names carved out on marble or stone and some decorated with flowers, pictures, or little trinkets left behind by loved ones. 

When she comes to a stop in front of Lisa’s headstone, she reads over to make sure that it’s her but it’s futile because she would be able to find this spot even if she were blind.

Lalisa Manoban

ลลิษา มโนบาล

A beloved daughter, friend, and partner

March 27, 1997 - May 24, 2019

Jennie swallows roughly and kneels down in the grass before reaching forward to lay her bouquet of carnations down. She only realizes that her hand is shaking when she runs her fingers along her name, feeling the letters under her fingertips as if she could summon her back just by that alone. 

“I miss you,” she whispers. “I miss you so much. I don’t know how to do this without you,” she sniffles and roughly wipes her cheeks so she doesn’t start crying. 

“Everyone says that it’s supposed to get better with time but it doesn’t” she shakes her head. “It doesn’t get any better, it only gets worse. It only got worse for me. You would probably hate to see me right now,” she grins sadly. 

She pulls her hand away and brings them together in her lap. It hurts so much when she blinks and stares up at the sky, the clouds floating above and the sky so blue that it almost seems clear. The sun is just barely starting to peek out from its spot behind a cloud and Jennie wishes that this day could reflect how she really felt- bleak and hollow. 

“I can’t function without you. I can’t eat and I know you would be upset with me but I can’t physically bring myself to do it. When I look at food, it makes me sick and when I eat it, I can barely keep it down for an hour. I’m so hungry-” she frowns and takes a deep breath as she clutched her stomach through her shirt. “But I just can’t- I can’t do it.”

“Everything hurts all the time, too” she whispers. “My head, my throat, it’s all nothing but pain. I don’t know how people deal with this because I don’t know how to.”

A crow flies low overhead and Jennie watches it fly toward a branch before picking at a leaf and cocking its head at her. She breathes through her nose and rubs her eye with one hand. 

“I don’t have anything good to tell you, unfortunately. You took all of that with you.”

Lisa took her laughter, her smiles, all those happy memories and went away with those things in her head. Jennie hasn’t smiled in three months, she doesn’t think her facial muscles have the ability to do that anymore. 

“Did you enjoy listening to the girls just then?” she asks, gesturing behind herself. “Chaeyoung, Nayeon, Irene, and Heejin were here. They look good, well, about as good as anyone can right now. I- I miss them, you know? It probably doesn’t seem like that because I haven’t spoken to them or went to see them, but I do. I miss them a lot.”

Lisa was the one that had introduced Jennie to Nayeon and Heejin. While Irene was Jennie’s friend, the six of them had gotten closer through Jennie and Lisa’s relationship. They would go out to eat, laughing loudly in restaurants, talking for hours outside on a park bench, doing shopping trips for someone’s birthday, or spending nights cooking in her apartment since Jennie’s place was bigger. Lisa was the link between Jennie and them and although she knew that wasn’t the case, she just couldn’t help but feel that it was. When Lisa died, so did her relationship with the girls. She didn’t know how to face them, what to say, or how to act anymore. 

“I think I’m just ashamed,” she shook her head. “I feel like everyone is moving on with their lives and functioning like a human being should, but here I am- barely subsisting. A part of me doesn’t want to move ahead and a part of me is mad that everyone else is.”

She stared at the headstone and shook her head before looking down again. “It’s pathetic, huh?”

Silence answered her question and Jennie picked at some of the grass underneath her fingers before brushing it away.

“Your parents are doing okay. Your mom is cooking again, she wrote to me a few days ago and told me that she was working on a cookbook with your dad. She said you would have liked it because you’re so greedy,” she chuckled. “I bet you would have too,” she murmured. 

“She said something about it helping her, cooking at least. That it made it easier for her to deal with your death by turning to food. It brought her good memories, I think. But that makes sense, you always talked about being in the kitchen with your parents- you said it made the food taste better when people you liked, cooked.”

Jennie wiped her nose with the back of her hand and rubbed her eyes again. “My mom is okay, too. The family is worried about me but that’s not anything new. I think they want me to move back but mom hasn’t said anything yet. I think she’ll want my father to talk to me first before she does. I won’t leave though,” she shook her head. “ I can’t- I mean, that apartment is...that apartment is everything for me. It’s ours, together. Every part of me- _us_ \- is inside of it.”

When Jennie hears a car pull into the cemetery, she looks over her shoulder at the white Mustang that drives past the plots to another section of graves on the other side. 

“I just want you back,” she whispers. “I just want you back, Lisa. I need you to come back to me. I need you,” and when she feels herself start to choke up, she pushes the heel of her palms into her eyes but it’s no use. She can feel the tears slip down her cheeks and run past her jaw. 

“Why would you leave me?” she croaks and it feels like her heart is splitting itself open again. It feels like that day at the funeral when she sobbed so much that she couldn’t give her speech. All the blood rushes into her head and whites out any other noise besides the one of her own crying. 

“I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” 

Jennie dropped her head into the dirt, her fingers sinking into the soil as she cried into the grass. Her chest heaved and the tears that felt raw and real, only further solidified how bad this had gotten. The pounding in her head increased tenfold and she grits her teeth together until she started crying even harder. 

“Please, please come back to me. I can’t live like this. I can’t do this. I need you in my life, I need you to help me, _please_ ,” she sobbed and she tried to take a deep breath but she couldn’t. 

“Just come back, Goddamn it!” she screamed and yanked a fistful of grass out of the ground and chucked it. 

It had only been three months since her death but it felt like it happened yesterday. When she closed her eyes, she saw the phone call at 11:38 at night. She saw the accident photos in the police station, she saw her corpse laying on that table as lifeless as Jennie had felt. She saw her casket and she saw her grave and it made her crazy. 

The crow had left the branch, flying off with the leaf between its beak and Jennie felt that much like the bird, she was slipping away too. 

“What if she could?”

Jennie startled, jumping up to her feet and spinning around so fast that she became lightheaded, slightly stumbling to the side. 

There was a woman leaning against the tree in a white dress. She was barefoot and had a headband on that pushed her bangs off of her forehead. Her hair was long and thick, falling in waves past her shoulders and she was tall, almost as tall as Jennie. 

Jennie blinked twice to make sure she wasn’t seeing things and frowned at the woman. 

“Who the hell are you?”

“Jisoo,” she beamed and lifted off of the tree to walk over to her. She held out her hand to shake it but when Jennie didn’t move, she sighed and dropped her hand to her side. 

“Well...I couldn’t help but overhear you and-”

“Can you leave me alone? Do you usually eavesdrop on people’s fucking conversations?”

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” she scoffed and ran a hand down her face before pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“Listen. Just listen to me, okay?”

“No, I don’t want to listen to you. I want to talk to my girlfriend in peace, okay?!”

“You mean Lalisa?”

“How the fuck do you-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jisoo said holding up her hands. “Listen to me first and then I can explain what’s going on. Okay?”

The smart thing to do would have been to punch this girl out and then call the cops on her crazy ass for disturbing the peace or some shit. But Jennie was at a disadvantage because she barely had enough strength to bolt if the situation called for it, let alone throw a punch hard enough to cause any damage. 

“What if I told you that if instead of bringing Lisa back, I could take you to her?”

Jennie opened her mouth but Jisoo held up her hand before she could speak. “I know, I know. You would tell me to _'go screw myself'_. But what if I could, would you? Would you let me take you to her?”

Jennie blinked slowly, this must be what a psychotic break looks like. This had to be it. She had officially gone crazy. Perfect. This is just what she needed. Once her mom got wind of this not only would she take her back home, but she would also commit her. 

But if she was having a psychotic break, she could enjoy it, right? I mean, what else did she have to lose? She had already lost the one thing that had mattered more than anything else in this world. She could indulge this girl for a little bit. Humor her, even. She wanted to take her to Lisa? Well then, fuck. 

“You’ll take me to see my girlfriend?”

“I will,” she nodded and crossed her arms over her chest with a smile. 

“How?” 

“Through that” Jisoo said, pointing at something behind Jennie. In the middle of two plots, a clear white orb was floating in the air. Jennie couldn’t see anything past it but when Jisoo started to walk over to it, the orb widened until it looked wide enough to fit a person through. 

“What...is that?”

“Your route back to Lisa. That’s what you want right? This will take you there,” Jisoo nodded towards it. “She died on May 24th at 1:38 in the morning on the operating table. This will take you to one week before the accident, May 17th.”

Jennie stared at her in disbelief. There was no way Jisoo could know that information unless she was family, which she wasn’t. Her death hadn’t been on the news, just in a small section of the obituaries page in the morning paper. Any regular person would have simply turned the page, feeling sorry for that person in the only way an outside observer could. 

“Go back to her and fix it,” Jisoo said, her brown eyes lit in excitement. “I’ll give you one week to stop Lisa from being killed that night.”

“You can’t do that,” Jennie frowned. “You can’t- that’s not,” because she couldn’t right? I mean, that was crazy! You couldn’t just toss someone into the past and rewrite the future just like that. Things like that didn’t happen and yet, here she was- staring right back at Jennie with the opportunity to do just that. 

“I can,” Jisoo smiled. “I’m showing you I can. It’s your job to prevent it.”

“But what if- what if I don’t? What if I don’t prevent the accident from happening?”

“You’re such a pessimist,” she rolled her eyes. “Will you at least _try?_ You have one week. Here,” she pulled a watch from the pocket of her dress, a simple black watch with gold lining and an **L** stitched into the leather strap. She put it over Jennie’s wrist and tightened it before taping on the glass. 

“Take this watch. If you can’t prevent her death before May 24th at 10:00, then you’ll be brought back to this time period and well,” she shrugged. “I can’t help you anymore.”

“And if I do?”

Jisoo’s smile took over her entire face, her eyes crinkling in the corner as she laughed and wound her fingers around Jennie’s wrist. “Then you’ll stay. You’ll get your Lisa back after all.”

_You’ll get your Lisa back after all._

_Oh._ How perfect those words sounded rolling in her head. This is what hope must have felt like. This soul shattering and earth quaking, this is what people talked about. This was an unfurling in her chest that breathed life into her bones. This is what made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and her eyes water in relief. This is what she needed, what she had desperately wanted. A do-over. A way to go back and prevent this from happening. A way to get a second chance with Lisa and have the life that they had envisioned for themselves. This was it. 

“I just need to know,” she swallowed and her face must have given her away because Jisoo was still smiling. 

“Why me? Why are you doing this for me?”

“It’s just like you said,” Jisoo murmured and pulled her along in the direction of the orb. “You need her in your life.”


	2. lukewarm happiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: brief mention of suicidal thoughts

“Remember, you have a week,” Jisoo murmurs. 

Jennie glances down at the watch on her wrist, the numbers glaring at back at her as she takes a deep breath. 

“If you can’t do it before May 24th at 10:00 PM, then-”

“I know, I know,” Jennie frowns. _You’ll come back here._

The words echoed in her head like a mockery. As crazy as this all seems, she can’t go back to the life that she was a part of. She can’t go back to that apartment and think that living among Lisa’s things is an option. She can’t watch her friends move on with their lives or sit through another visit from her mother before she moves her back to their hometown. She just can’t. Staying there- someplace without Lisa- is no longer plausible. 

“Just making sure,” Jisoo smiles sympathetically.

She takes Jennie’s hand, her fingers cold but deft as they circle the gold lining of the watch before pressing on the button at the top. 

“Go get here,” she whispers.

 

 

**May 17th**

**Friday**

**07:02:41:29**

When Jennie walks into the apartment, she can hear the music playing from the speakers in the kitchen. It’s a song that she recognizes instantly, from some Indonesian singer named niki that Lisa was obsessed with. She pauses in the entryway, her feet frozen as she hears the lyrics carry out from the kitchen until she feels herself experience a weird sense of deja vu.

_We were better off as friends_

_It’s not you, I do this all the time_

“It’s not you, I do this all the time,” she murmured underneath her breath. She knew the lyrics because she had sung this very same song the night she came home from the grocery store.

Jennie glanced down and saw the large tote bag on her arm before swallowing and toeing her shoes off. She bent down to place her sandals next to Lisa’s Adidas and her hands were shaking so bad that she knocked over one of the sneakers, hurriedly picking it back up to set it in its place. 

As she walked to the kitchen, she saw the apartment that she had come to call home, not the one that had turned into a painful reminder of what she once had. There was the fuzzy throw blanket folded up over the couch, Lisa’s socks on the floor because she hated wearing them, Jennie’s architecture magazines spread out on the coffee table, and a half-eaten piece of toast on the island as she put her tote down. 

The kitchen was the same, but instead of staring back at a bare fridge, there were reminders to pick up the clothes from the dry cleaners, to call the girls to set up a lunch date, send money back to Lisa’s parents on Friday, and to clean the bathroom on Sunday. 

Jennie swallowed roughly and stared at the colorful sticky notes, her stomach twisting in painful knots as she stepped closer and reached a hand to run her fingers over the paper. It was all in Lisa’s ugly handwriting but it was _hers_ and she couldn’t believe that she was seeing all of this again. 

“Babe, is that you? Did you get my text about picking up a roll of toilet paper?” 

Jennie’s hand dropped to her side and she whirled around so fast that she had to grab the edge of the counter to keep herself from falling. White spots danced in the corner of her eyes as she blinked multiple times before letting out a heavy sigh. She could see her fingers gripping the counter and she could see how white her knuckles had turned from how hard her grip was. 

It was _her_ voice. 

It was _Lisa’s_ voice. 

Something in the back of her head screamed that this was not real, that after that night in the hospital, after the photos at the police station, and the body that she saw in the morgue, there was no way that could be Lisa’s voice. But her mind was fine-tuned to things like that. She had spent years listening to her laugh, watching the way lines formed around her mouth if she smiled too hard, at the way she talked with her hands and the way she looked at you with all of her attention because that was just what she did. She knew everything about Lisa and that was her- that was her voice as clear as day. 

“Babe, did you hear me?”

Nothing could prepare her for what she expected to see when Lisa finally rounded the corner. She was dressed in sweatpants and an old Seoul National University sweatshirt, an old mustard stain over the word ‘Seoul’ from when she was making a sandwich and squirted too much out of the bottle. There was a hole in the hem of her shirt and her hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail with loose strands framing the side of her face. 

Jennie wanted to say something, wanted to tell her so much, but she couldn’t. She felt her mouth open and she knew that there were so many jumbled up words that were threatening to come out but she physically couldn’t. 

“Baby?” Lisa said waving her hand in front of her. “Baby are you okay?”

She felt her eyes fill with tears and when she swallowed again, it sounded like she was choking. Her hands started shaking and Lisa’s eyes widened in surprise before she was crossing the space between them to take Jennie into her arms and hold her face in her hands. 

“Why are you crying? What’s wrong?!”

How could she explain to her that Lisa had died? How could she explain to her that on May 24th she was killed in a car accident? How could she tell her that in the time following her death, that she had fallen apart? That she had holed herself up in their apartment and refused to leave? That she let food rot in their fridge because it gave her more comfort than other person had. How could she tell her that she hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, or talked to anyone for months because she hated that everyone else was slowing moving on? How could she tell Lisa that the night she died, she wished that she would have died too?

Tears blurred her vision and she shook her head, unable to articulate into words what she desperately wanted to say. It felt like someone had carefully opened up her chest and inserted her heart back into its rightful place. It felt like she could breathe again with both of her lungs. She wanted to breathe, to smell the way their home smelled like it was actually lived in but when she tried to, she realized that she was sobbing. 

Lisa was at a loss for words, unable to understand why she was crying or what had happened to her at the supermarket for her to be so distraught about. She wiped Jennie’s cheeks and used her thumbs to collect the snot that was gathering above her lip as she pleaded for her girlfriend to tell her what was wrong or what had upset her but it was useless. 

“Baby, please. Please talk to me, you’re scaring me,” she whimpered. 

Jennie tried to calm herself down but it felt like she was finally coming up for air after being submerged underwater for so long. She couldn’t stop crying, she couldn’t formulate a response to answer her, she couldn’t stop shaking enough to actually take in the fact that Lisa was real in this universe. That she could feel her clothes, the warmth of her skin, hear her voice, smell her body wash, or look into those eyes that always brought her back home. 

Jennie pushed her face into her sweatshirt, the material becoming wet from her tears as she grabbed a hold of her shirt with her fists and took in a lungful of air. This body was real and she was real.

Lisa was _real._

“Babe-”

“You’re here,” she whispered. 

Lisa’s hand that was running up and down her back, paused, the younger girl making a noise in the back of her throat before she pulled back and looked down at her. 

“Of course, I’m here. Why wouldn’t I be? Did something happen while you were at-”

“Nothing happened,” she shook her head quickly. Jennie blinked the tears out of her eyes and quickly wiped her face, not wanting to waste another second looking at Lisa. 

“Then why are you-” 

“I fell asleep on the subway,” she said and frowned at how hoarse her own voice sounded. “I fell asleep and had a nightmare. I woke up and I didn’t know where I was...I- I got scared,” she lied.

Lisa stared at her for a long moment and she could see the gears turning behind her eyes. She could see her calculating how much sense that made and whether she believed it or not. It wouldn’t be that far fetched since Jennie had done it plenty of times before. Falling asleep and missing her stop, only to have to take another train back to their neighborhood or falling asleep on Lisa’s shoulder and complaining all the way back until they made it to the apartment. 

“Well…” Lisa frowned. “What was it about? You looked like you saw a ghost when I came around the corner.”

Jennie could tell her about so many of the nightmares that she was having. She could tell her about the police report photos that made her scream at night. She could tell her about Lisa’s lifeless body that she couldn’t get out of her mind. She could tell her about the way she had envisioned ending her own life night after night and day after day. Her nightmares had come every single day that she didn’t have with Lisa. 

She couldn’t tell her that, though.

“I don’t really remember much…” she whispered. “But it made me nervous...I’m sorry.”

Lisa studied her again, her frown still sitting on her face until she let out a loud sigh and leaned down to rub her nose against Jennie’s in a way that always comforted her. 

“Please don’t scare me like that, honey. I was really shocked when you started crying and I didn’t know what to do.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. 

“You don’t have to apologize. I just don’t like to see you cry like that, it scares the hell out of me,” she chuckled nervously and then dipped her head down to kiss her. 

Jennie wishes that she could have prepared herself for that but she couldn’t. The moment she felt her lips press against her own, she felt her knees buckle and she had to grab onto Lisa so she didn’t fall down. Lisa had meant the kiss to be one of comfort but Jennie didn’t need comfort, she needed her. She needed those slightly chapped lips, she needed the taste of cinnamon and apple juice on her tongue, she needed the fingers that curled themselves around her back and the low sound that Lisa made when she deepened the kiss. 

When she felt like she needed air, she pulled back reluctantly and felt her fingers shake when Lisa blinked into focus and pressed another quick kiss to the tip of her nose. 

“You okay?”

She nodded, not yet trusting herself with words, but looked into Lisa’s eyes to convey that she was. She was okay. This is what being okay felt like. Not laying in her bed all hours of the day in the dark, not ignoring her friends for months because she was ashamed, not avoiding her family and starving herself because she felt like she had nothing else to live for.

_That_ wasn’t okay but this-this was okay.

“You’re such a weird girl,” Lisa chuckled and ran a hand down her hair before smiling and kissing both of her wet cheeks. 

“Why don’t you sit down for a little bit and I’ll put the groceries away, okay?”

Jennie should have said yes but she didn’t want to spend a moment away from her. She had seen what it was like to be without her for three months and she couldn’t- she couldn't spend any more time away from her. 

“No...no, let me help you.”

“Are you sure?” she asked Jennie, her eyes studying her skeptically. 

“I- I’m sure,” she nodded. “I was just scared, I’m not scared anymore.”

Lisa stared at her for another long moment before sighing loudly and squeezing her cheeks together so she could kiss her again. When she pulled back, Jennie followed her lips and kissed her three more times, the younger girl laughing until she held her back by her shoulders.

She pulled away from her embrace to start unpacking the groceries in the bag. A bottle of sour cream, a carton of eggs, a case of beer, a pack of meat, and a package of tissue paper. Jennie didn’t - couldn’t- look away from Lisa as she placed the things neatly in the fridge then turned around to kick the door shut with her foot. 

“So much for helping me,” Lisa snorted, making a face. 

Jennie blinked, watching the way her lips tugged into a half grin and the twinkle of amusement in her eyes. 

The staring. 

She had to stop staring or this was going to be uncomfortable, at least for Lisa. She just- she just couldn’t help it. It was her, it was all Lisa, standing there right in front of her. It was as if the car accident didn’t happen- as if she had never left Jennie in this very same apartment to pick up the pieces after her. 

“Hey, wanna watch Captain Marvel?”

Lisa was walking over towards her, taking her hand and tugging her in the direction of the living room where her laptop was already set up. 

“It’s not plugged in, it’s dead.”

Lisa frowned, staring at her laptop on the table before she stomped her foot childishly and ran out of the living room to look for it somewhere in their bedroom. 

“Hey!” she called out. “How did you know that? The battery dies so fast on that thing!” she whined. 

Jennie stared at the laptop, her fingers messing with the bottom of her shirt as she took another breath to calm herself down. 

“We’ve watched it already,” she murmured. “It died ten minutes in.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

**May 18th**

**Saturday**

**06:18:12:42**

Sunlight burns across the back of her eyelids when Jennie stirs awake. She can hear what sounds like pots and pans clanging in the kitchen and water running while a song plays loudly, probably to drown out the sound of whatever is going on in the kitchen. 

She rubs her eyes and sits up slowly, the blanket pooling at her waist as she looks across the bed to see the sheet is undone and the pillow halfway off the mattress. 

“Lisa slept here last night,” she whispers to herself. 

It seems impossible, but it did happen. She remembers watching her brush her teeth in the sink, trying to talk over the toothpaste in her mouth before she almost choked. She remembers how Lisa had shed her clothes to take a shower and not even a minute later, joining her under the spray of the water and laughing as the younger girl suggested they have sex. 

Their shower was small and hard to maneuver in with Lisa’s long limbs, but they managed and Jennie had wanted to cry when the other girl had her lips pressed to her throat but she held it back. She wanted to cry when Lisa grabbed at her body and when she had pressed her against the tiles of the wall. She didn’t, though. 

And when they were finished, panting into each other’s mouths and holding on to any area of skin they could reach, Jennie thought about suggesting they do it again. She wanted to keep having sex until she felt like Lisa was apart of her. She wanted to keep going until her legs ached and her mouth ran dry. She wanted to feel her skin against Lisa’s until she didn’t know where one began and the other ended. She wanted that level of intimacy that had vanished when Lisa died. She wanted it so badly that it was making her lose all rational sense of thinking. 

Unfortunately, they tumbled into bed. Lisa yawning so much as they toweled off and complaining about being half asleep as Jennie laughed and threw the blankets over both of them. 

It was probably the longest and most peaceful that she had ever slept. 

In the present, she wasted no time going through the familiar motions of getting dressed, brushing her teeth and padding into the kitchen where Lisa was pouring Frosted Flakes into two separate bowls. 

“With all that noise you were making, I have to say I’m severely underwhelmed.”

Lisa smiled sheepishly, pouring milk into both before grabbing a spoon and pushing one in Jennie’s direction. 

“I was going to make pancakes but I don’t know what happened.”

_I know_ she wanted to tell her. Instead, she pressed her lips together to fight off a smile and peeked over Lisa’s shoulder to see the pans in the sink and a half-opened container of pancake batter sitting on the counter.

“It’s the thought that counts,” she chuckled. 

“That’s why you’re my girlfriend,” Lisa smirked. 

Jennie rolled her eyes and took a seat on the stool, pulling the bowl closer to herself as she dunked her spoon in and took a bite. Lisa finished her cereal first, a milk mustache on her face as she drank the rest of the milk and then noisily went about doing the dishes in the sink. 

“Hey, do you want to grab lunch from that restaurant that opened up downtown?” she said over her shoulder. 

“Which one?”

“You know,” Lisa said and moved some of the plates on the drying rack next to the sink. “It has that pink flamingo in the window and the rooftop seating area.”

Jennie swallowed, gathering her bowl and walking over to Lisa’s side to hand it to her. “Okay, I’ll pay this time, though.”

As Lisa scrubbed the bowl and then the spoon and washed them out, Jennie studied the side of her face. She saw the way a small smile tugged at her lips, at the way she still had crust in the corner of her eye from sleep and the neckline of her shirt that was slipping off of her shoulder. 

She looked away when Lisa caught her eye, turning around to put the milk back into the fridge and then padding off back into their bedroom. 

Jennie went through the motions of fixing their bed, folding the sheets and putting the pillows correctly against the headboard. The task helped keep her hands occupied but it did nothing to calm her thoughts down. She wanted to spend every second she could around Lisa, watching her wash the dishes, or eat, or take a nap on the couch. She wanted to have all those memories back that was taken from her when Lisa died, but she also knew that she was here to stop something. 

She just didn’t know what that something was.

That’s what bothered her the most. Despite the initial elation that came with going back in time to be with Lisa, she didn’t know what it was that she had to look out for. Was there a sign? Did Lisa have to say something? What was she supposed to catch that she didn’t pick up on the first time? It felt like she was anxiously waiting for a shoe to drop somewhere that would tell her, _‘this is it!’ ‘this is how she dies!’_

That feeling not only unsettled her but it also made her impatient. It was Saturday, meaning she only had six more days to try to stop Lisa from being killed. She couldn’t go back to the way her life was. _God_ , she couldn’t, at least not anymore. Not after she had been able to experience what life was like with Lisa back in her own. She couldn’t go back to sleeping on a bed too big for herself, to a kitchen that wasn’t lively without Lisa, to a shower that felt cold and isolating without the younger girl pressed up against her. 

She couldn’t go back to that. She had to stop this.

“Babe?”

Arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her back against a warm chest and Jennie startled, dropping the t-shirt that was in her hand. 

“Don’t do that,” Jennie frowned. 

“Sorry,” Lisa chuckled and squeezed her around the middle before pecking the side of her neck. “I’m gonna get dressed then head out to my appointment with a client. Do you want help with anything before I go?”

“No, I’m good.”

Lisa pecked her again, this time on the cheek, and she watched her pull away before walking over to their closet and sliding the door back. 

“Oh, Chaeyoung called,” she said grabbing down a white crop top and a pair of faded baggy jeans. “Her and Irene wanted to join us for lunch, is that cool?”

She popped her head through the hole in her shirt and Jennie walked over, smoothing down her hair and pushing her bangs out of her eyes. 

“That’s fine. I’ll text them.”

Lisa smiled and finished dressing quickly, running around the apartment to grab her backpack, her camera bag, and her wallet and the keys before pulling her shoes on by the front door. 

“I’ll meet you at the restaurant, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jennie wanted to tell her to stay. To miss her appointment and even though she knew it was stupid, if she were to really ask, to beg Lisa right now, she would probably do it. Some part of her wanted that. She wanted to be selfish and catch up on time that she was going to lose. She wanted Lisa to be around her every minute, she wanted to watch her do every mundane thing possible and etch it into her memory so she would remember all of these little things.

It wasn’t fair that when she kissed her, it felt like a goodbye. It wasn’t fair that even though she knew it was a Saturday and Lisa died on a Friday, that she still felt like this was the last time she would ever see her. It wasn’t fair that she grabbed a hold of her hand and kissed her back like it didn’t cause an ache to erupt in her chest at Lisa leaving her once again. 

“I’ll see you soon,” the younger girl smiled and kissed her two more times.

_Will you?_ She wanted to whisper out loud.

Lisa pulled open the door and left, the lock clicking in place behind her as Jennie listened to her footsteps until she couldn’t anymore.

 

Jennie had made it to the restaurant early, choosing a table in the back against one of the large windows and waiting patiently. The restaurant was hardly packed, with a few tables open towards the front and the sound of the food being cooked in the kitchen and nearby conversations creating a low buzz of white noise in Jennie’s ears. The soft white halogen lights that hang above the tables cast a shadow on the oak wood when she lays both of her hands out, glancing down at the watch on her wrist and the numbers that stare back at her. 

She stares at the watch for so long that she doesn’t notice the sound of her name being called over the jazz music playing or see the girls making their way over to the table before they take a seat. 

“Jennie.”

She jumps, her hand knocking into the napkin holder as Irene snorts and Chaeyoung rolls her eyes. 

“Are you alright? Were you waiting long?”

She looks up and she shouldn’t be surprised but she is. These were her friends before Lisa died, she had to remember that. Irene’s hair was longer, running pin straight past her shoulders and her bangs pinned to the side with a clip. She was wearing a strapless red dress and her nails were done with a design, the rhinestones on her thumb reflecting the light above them. Chaeyoung wore a yellow shirt underneath a pair of dark washed overalls and a bucket hat with the words ‘punk’ stitched in yellow across the front. When she stares at them, it almost takes her a minute to recognize them because of course, they’re the same people but they’re not the people from her time. They look happy, they don’t look like that day that Jennie had waited for them to leave at the cemetery. 

Their eyes don’t hold that same pain that Jennie had seen in her own. They don’t have bags underneath their eyes from a lack of sleep. There isn’t this big chasm between them anymore, at least not for the moment, no, because Lisa is still alive here. 

“I wasn’t waiting long,” she shook her head. “And yes I’m alright, stop worrying about me.”

Jennie moved her foot out of the way, anticipating Chaeyoung’s reaction and she had to keep the smile off her face when the other girl frowned and attempted to kick her leg underneath the table, missing. 

“Brat.”

Jennie shrugged and Irene laughed, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as Chaeyoung sighed loudly and pinched the bridge of her nose. 

“Why did I agree to come here?”

_“Technically_ , you invited yourself.”

“Only because Irene forced me to!” Chaeyoung nudged her hard and Irene frowned, shoving her back. 

“We’ve been planning to come here for ages and once Lisa said that she had time, it only made sense to meet up with you two.”

“You mean fourth wheel,” Chaeyoung stressed and pulled out her phone to check her lipstick. “They turn every outing into a date, they’ll be feeding each other before this is over. It’s disgusting.”

The waiter came over to their table, a short blonde haired girl with piercings in her left ear and a white shirt with the restaurant’s logo across the front. While she wrote down what they would like to drink, Jennie’s leg was bouncing underneath the table and she snuck a glance out the window. 

Where was Lisa?

“So two lemonades and for you, miss?”

She was dead. 

She had to be dead.

_I was too late_ , Jennie thought to herself. Her heart dropped in her stomach at that realization. It couldn’t be possible though. No yet, she still had a few more days to get this right- to make things right again.

She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t- this was not the way things went. 

Jennie felt her teeth sink into her bottom lip, the pressure enough to pierce the skin and have the taste of copper coat her tongue. 

She had to do this again. She had to go back. She had to find Jisoo or something, reset the time so she could go back and tell Lisa that she didn’t want to go out for lunch, that they could just order up to the apartment and stay in. 

How could everything go wrong in such a short amount of time? 

“Jenn-”

“Guys!”

Jennie’s head shot up, a sharp pain traveling up the back of her neck, enough to make her wince as she saw Lisa maneuver past the tables and wave her hands at them like she already didn’t have their attention. 

“Sorry, I’m late,” she smiled sheepishly and excused herself past the waiter to take a seat at the table. 

“Where the fuck were you?” Chaeyoung frowns.

“You’re late to everything, this is the last time we invite ourselves,” Irene says. 

“Good!”

Jennie can hear them talking, she can hear the music playing overhead, and the way Lisa noisily sets her bag down on the floor and pulls her chair closer to her. She can hear it all- even the blood that’s rushing through her ears. She doesn’t even know that she’s holding her breath until Lisa laces their fingers together underneath the table and she squeezes them. 

“You good?”

Jennie blinks, her vision refocusing on Lisa’s face and creating the details of her eyes, the shape of her nose, and the small quirk of her lips. 

“I-I’m okay,” she nods. “Just...I was just worried…”

“Sorry,” she frowns and leans forward to kiss her. 

Chaeyoung gags and the waiter asks them again for what they would like to drink before Lisa is telling her two beers and she’s writing it down quickly on the notepad before walking away. 

“Don’t start that shit,” Chaeyoung says.

Lisa kisses her on the mouth again, just to annoy Chaeyoung, and Irene laughs as Chaeyoung picks up her menu and stands it up to block her vision. 

“What took you so long?” Jennie murmurs.

“I think I should take the car in. I was trying to turn the car on for like ten minutes and it wouldn’t start. It might be the starter.”

“Oh,” Jennie nodded. “Okay.”

She had to calm down before she did something to inadvertently mess up the timeline. Jennie took a deep breath and picked her menu up, glancing at Lisa from the corner of her eye as she balled up her napkin and threw it at Chaeyoung’s menu. 

“Do you guys want to go see a movie this weekend?” Irene says. 

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. I thought one of you would suggest something,” she shrugged. 

Lisa snorted and scanned the menu one more time before looking up. “Is there anything out right now?”

“There’s that one scary movie…”

The waiter made her way back around to their table with a tray of drinks and passed them out one-by-one. Jennie let Lisa take her beer, the younger girl popping open the cap and passing it back to her with a small smile. 

“So are we ready to order?”

 

It was late, almost seven o’clock, the sun dripping through the windows as patrons drifted in and out of the restaurant. The music changing from soft jazz to r&b and hip-hop as other bars across the street began to open and crowds gathered outside. The lights hanging from outside twinkled under the setting sun and the tobacco smoke from a group of friends standing outside drifted into the restaurant as Jennie listened to Lisa tell a joke that she already knew the answer to. 

“That’s not even funny!” Irene laughed.

Her cheeks were ruddy from the margarita that she had just finished, her fingernails tapping against the neck of the glass as Chaeyoung stared on uninterestedly. 

“You’re laughing!” Lisa scoffed. 

“Because it’s so stupid,” Chaeyoung rolled her eyes. “Jennie, how do you even put up with this? I feel like sticking these chopsticks in my ears.”

“Stop being mean,” Jennie snickered. “I think it’s funny,” she said looking up at Lisa and snorting when the younger girl threw her arm around her shoulder and beamed.

_“See?_ Jennie likes it.”

“Jennie has to like it if she wants to get any pussy tonight.”

Lisa choked, her eyes bulging as she started coughing loudly while Jennie and Irene bust out laughing. Jennie was laughing so hard that she fell back in her chair, throwing her head back as her eyes welled up with tears and Lisa began taking all her dirty napkins and flinging them at the younger girl. 

“You have like-” she gestured with her hands. “No brain to mouth filter!”

Chaeyoung laughed, sticking her tongue out before shrugging. “I’m right though, am I not?”

“That’s none of your business!”

Irene was wiping her eyes, still laughing into her hand, but not as hard as she was earlier. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and reached for her phone as it started buzzing on the table. 

“Don’t forget to sext me pics later,” Chaeyoung winked at Jennie. 

“Okay,” she cackled and Lisa turned even redder if that was possible, moving to cover Jennie’s ears with both of her hands as she whined, “stop talking.”

After Chaeyoung made fun of Lisa for a little bit longer and Jennie finished the rest of her second beer, Irene announced that she had to leave to pick up her brother at university and since both girls had come together, Chaeyoung was leaving with her. 

After paying the bill, the girls said their goodbyes and parted outside the front of the restaurant. Jennie took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of food stalls and exhaust fumes as people pour out onto the street and storefronts open with flashing lights and loud music carries out of the windows. Jennie tries to focus on what she should be worried about, taking Lisa’s hand as she stands back up from tying her shoe, but as she looks at the younger girl all she can think about is how badly she wishes this was her universe right now.  
Even amidst the people bustling back and forth on the street and the ahjumma standing by a cart with handmade jewelry, haggling people to stop and look at her pieces, that right now, at this moment she would be fine if she were to stay here. Lisa walks slowly, admiring everything as if she’s seeing Seoul at night and all these different shops for the first time- and technically, she is, but Jennie isn’t. She remembers the man with the clothes laid out on the table and hung up on the rack in front of a small shop. She remembers the teenagers beatboxing on the sidewalk to an iKon song and the woman feeding her baby on the bench as her husband drank sikhye. 

But Lisa points out everything to her- even something as ordinary as a tornado potato- that Jennie eventually buys because of her insistent whining. As Lisa’s squirting ketchup on the potato, the smoke from the stall warming their faces and the wind blowing her bangs, Jennie thinks of how perfect everything is right now. How happy she is watching her lick ketchup from her finger and take a bite before offering some to Jennie. 

That cloud that followed her after Lisa’s death almost feels like it was a figment of her imagination. As if she had dreamed up her girlfriend dying and then everything else that came after that. When Lisa is pulling her down the street and holding out her phone to take a photo of them, she smiles- not at the camera, but at Lisa. She even lifts up on her toes to press a kiss to her cheek, the skin warm against her lips and the light scent of her perfume comforting Jennie. 

“Hey.”

Lisa gestures up at a building with multiple floors, each belonging to different establishments with the two main floors visible from the street housing a noraebang. Multi-colored disco lights reflect off of the glass windows and the faint sound of music drifts down to sidewalk as Jennie stares up at the building. 

“Want to sing a song with me?”

Lisa’s eyes are bright underneath the lights, the glow from the store highlighting the blonde streaks in her hair and the scratch underneath her chin that she tried to cover up with makeup earlier. Jennie burns this image into her eyelids until it feels like she’s captured a picture of it. 

“Something from SEVENTEEN?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

**May 19th**

**Sunday**

**05:09:11:24**

 

“You ever think about it someday?”

“Think about what?”

Lisa plops down on the couch beside her, her DSLR camera in one hand as Jennie pauses an episode of Chambers on Netflix. The windows are open, allowing the natural sunlight to coat their hardwood floors and carry a soft breeze through the apartment. Her feet are slightly cold so she pulls them up to tuck them underneath her legs and reaches for the blanket that they keep on the back of the couch to spread over her lap. 

“Kids,” Lisa says and turns her camera to show her the picture on the screen. 

It’s one from her session on Saturday. It was a birthday party for a five-year-old girl and Lisa had gushed about it for hours after they came back from the noraebang, drunk from the beer they had at the restaurant and the drinks that they had ordered in the karaoke room. It was Toy Story themed with the children dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, astronauts, soldiers, or animals. They had spent most of their time in the bouncy castle judging from Lisa’s shots, but they had also destroyed a pinata of Mr. Potato Head and ate a cake that was decorated with the words Pizza Planet written across it. 

“Um...are we...are we really having this conversation right now?”

“Do you want to?” Lisa eyes her nervously.

Jennie sighs and turns around so she can face Lisa completely. With her hands in her lap, she takes a hold of the blanket and looks up at the picture of the little girl, Mei, dressed as a cowgirl with purple tassels.

“Maybe...someday?”

“Why does that sound like a question?” Lisa raises her eyebrow. 

“Because it is! I’m not sure...I like kids, I do, but I also like what we have now.” 

Lisa nods and looks down at her camera for a second before sighing quietly. “I get that. I like what we have to.”

She continues to stare at the screen until Jennie pushes the blanket to the floor and crawls over so she can curl up against Lisa’s side, resting her cheek against her arm. “A kid is a lot, you know. We have to have money, for one. Two, unless we moved your equipment into the living room, we would have no place for a kid and this apartment is small. We would have to move. Three, we’re barely making ends meet. I would have to like...get a promotion or something and you would need to grow your clientele base.”

“So in other words,” Lisa chuckled. “We would need to drastically alter our lives.”

“Exactly and I’m not ready for that. I like our little apartment and my shitty office job and drinking throughout the week whenever I feel like it.”

Lisa snorted and moved her arm to wrap it around Jennie’s shoulder. “Honestly, me too. I was just curious, I guess.”

“I want kids. Just like...maybe in five years? Or six? Whenever we’re both ready. We should have like twins.”

“Twins?!” Jennie gasped and sat up quickly to stare at her girlfriend. “Are you crazy? One is enough, you’re already too much of a kid anyway.” 

Lisa frowned hard and Jennie couldn’t help it, immediately laughing out loud at the look on her face as the younger girl tried to push her away. 

“I’m highly offended!”

“You should be,” Jennie teased and laughed even harder when Lisa shoved her into the couch.

When the younger girl pulled the camera strap off from around her neck and set it on the coffee table, Jennie sat up and crawled over until she was seated in her lap. She threaded her fingers through her hair and pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose, murmuring _‘sorry’_ into her skin until Lisa’s arms came to wrap around her waist and pull her closer. She grumbled into Jennie’s neck about the disrespect she felt, her idea of having twins, and how cute they would look _‘if we gave them a sailor moon themed birthday.’_

“Maybe just one kid and a dog?” Jennie reasoned, leaning back to gauge Lisa’s reaction. 

“What about two kids and a dog?”

“How is that a compromise?”

“You get the dog and I get the twins,” Lisa chuckled. 

“That’s not a compromise,” Jennie rolled her eyes and laughed when Lisa playfully pinched her sides. 

“Think of the children,” the younger girl pouted. “The _children_ , Jennie.”

“I am,” she bopped her nose. “I’m thinking of one kid, this big kid,” she said wrapping her arms around Lisa’s neck.

“We can’t have sex every other night if a baby is sleeping between us and what about their schooling? Where are we gonna get the money to send our kid to school?”

Lisa whined into her neck but she knew that the other girl was following her line of thinking. A baby wasn’t something they could factor into their lives right now. They were still young and had plenty of other things going on. Not to mention, their money wasn’t the best right now and no matter how much Lisa pressed that their parents could help them out, it would take a hit to her pride too if she had to rely on her parents for their kid.

“I don’t even think I know how to change a diaper,” she mumbled. 

“That’s why they have YouTube,” Jennie laughed. 

“You think they have diaper changing tutorials on there?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“That...that is a very good question.”

Jennie laughed and leaned back, pushing Lisa’s hair behind her ears and angling her face so she could look up at her. Jennie wanted to tell her that any kid would be lucky to have Lisa as a parent. That she could imagine her reading their kid weird bedtime stories and changing her voice to fit the character. That she could see Lisa building forts in their cramped living room to play around and kissing their cuts if they ever fell down and hurt themselves. 

Kids would be nice. Maybe if their parents helped them out a bit, but they would have to make drastic changes that Jennie had mentioned earlier, things that she wasn’t exactly ready to do. She liked her job as monotonous as it was and with a kid, that would change everything. They would have to spend more time at home taking care of a baby or a toddler, and that would affect their income- which was something that couldn’t happen. 

Their parents would help out where they could but Jennie felt that if they brought a kid into their lives then it would be because they were prepared and didn’t have to rely on getting help from others. 

Besides, Lisa wanted this six years from now. A time period that was unattainable for her. She didn’t have six years, let alone an entire month. Jennie thought back to the clock on her watch, memorizing the numbers because it was the very thing keeping her in this timeline. 

She barely had four days left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**May 20th**

**Monday**

**04:16:40:20**

 

“I thought you were asleep,” Lisa mumbles tiredly into Jennie’s hair. 

The curtains are drawn, the room submerged in complete darkness as the AC blows from the other side of the room. Rain is pelting the window, thunder crackling loudly outside of the apartment as Jennie blinks awake in the dark, her eyes adjusting to the digital clock on the nightstand. 

2:43 AM

“The thunder keeps waking me up,” she yawns and shifts around on her back so she can face Lisa. 

The younger girl wiggles closer, their thighs touching as she runs her hand up her side until her palm is pressed against her back under her sleep shirt. 

A flash of lightning briefly illuminates the room, bathing the bedsheet and the side of Lisa’s face in a brilliant stroke of white. Jennie rubs her nose against Lisa’s own, feeling the younger girl draw in a slow breath before she kisses the side of her mouth. 

“In Thailand,” Lisa whispers, her breath fanning across Jennie’s face. “One day it was raining really hard-this was when I was little- I was on the train and I missed my stop.”

“How’d you miss it?”

“I got scared,” she says and then laughs quietly like she’s thinking of that memory. “I didn’t want to get off the train because I knew that I was going to get soaked, so I stayed on the train until the rain stopped.”

_You stayed on it until the last stop. The police were waiting for you with your mother at the station because you hadn’t been at the house when she came back from work._

“I rode it all the way until the final stop. When we reached the end of the line, I saw the police waiting on the platform with my mother. She said that she knew that I’d be here because I wasn’t home when she came back from work.”

Jennie ran her thumb over Lisa’s eyebrow, her eyes closing briefly before opening again. Another crack of thunder jolted the frame of the window and Lisa huffed, pushing her face further onto Jennie’s pillow. 

“What did your mom do when she saw you?”

_She hit me and then she cried because she thought something bad happened. She said if I was so scared of the rain, then I should just stay inside the house because it was always going to rain in Thailand._

“She smacked my arm but I could barely understand what she was saying underneath all the crying that she was doing. She thought that something bad had happened at first, but then she told me that if I was so scared of the rain, that I should stay inside the house for the rest of my life because it was always going to rain in Thailand.”

Jennie snorted, despite remembering this conversation, it was funny to have Lisa tell it to her again and watch the expressions across her face as she narrated the memory. The rain was getting heavier and as the trees whistled outside, the branches smacking against the glass, Jennie thought of how lonely she was without Lisa and her stories. She moved her head to lay her ear against her chest, listening to the sound of Lisa’s heartbeat as she tucked her head underneath her chin. In her time period, whenever it rained, she would simply throw the blankets over herself and wait for sleep to take her. 

It never did. 

It was the bed. It was strange to make yourself small on a bed that was meant for more than one person. She couldn’t sleep on the pillow because she always envisioned Lisa’s head right beside her own, their noses bumping together. The rain always sounded louder in the bedroom, in every room that she went to. When she couldn’t sleep, she would walk into the kitchen or sit in front of the TV until the power went out and then she was back to walking around again. She would smoke in the bathroom to try to calm her nerves down but the smell of tobacco would hurt her head along with the thunder outside, so she would quickly put the cigarette out. 

Now, staring down at the design on Lisa’s shirt and listening to her heartbeat, Jennie felt all those rainy nights that she had spent by herself, slip away. Lisa's fingers that were absentmindedly tracing circles into her skin, felt like tiny tendrils pulling away each hollow memory that she had wandering around their apartment like a ghost.

“Even if your mom and the police weren’t there...would you still have gotten off the train?” Jennie murmured. 

She doesn’t expect Lisa to answer her. Not with the way her heartbeat has slowed down and her breathing had evened out. Jennie curls her fingers into the material of her shirt and tries to hold onto her as tight as she can without making her uncomfortable. 

“Yes,” she hears her whisper above her. 

Jennie swallows loudly in the darkness, her heart only picking up as she startles and squeezes her eyes shut. 

“Eventually...I would have to, wouldn’t I?”

Jennie knows that she’s blinking slowly, probably struggling to stay awake and continue, but she does. 

“Even if it continued to rain, I would have still been scared, yeah, but I would have to get out and walk home at some point.”

“You would have been soaked,” Jennie said. 

“I know but my mom was right. It was always going to rain in Thailand, whether I was afraid or not, I couldn't avoid it.”

“But...but what if- what if you could? Avoid the rain...I mean.”

“That would be nice,” she chuckled quietly. “I still would have been scared but if I stayed there on the train, it wouldn’t do me any good. If I had the ability to stop the rain when I was little...I would do it in a heartbeat.”

_Then why can’t I get off this train?_ Jennie thinks to herself.

Even as she lies here in Lisa’s arms and tucked underneath her chin, she envisions her life in the present and what it’s come to. Lisa knew that she was afraid of the rain, was terrified of what would happen to her outside of the train, but she still would have gotten off regardless of whether anyone was waiting for her or not. 

Jennie couldn’t see it the same way, though. After Lisa died, she was unwilling to let go of her, of the apartment, of the life they had created by themselves. Lisa told her that even if it continued to rain, she would have walked because that was the only way to get home, but Jennie couldn’t see it that way. Even after her friends had tried to reach out to her and her mother was insistent about bringing her down to Cheongdamn-dong more often, Jennie didn’t see the utility of continuing with her life or starting over as if Lisa had never been a part of her life. Jennie couldn’t- as much as she hated to admit it- she _couldn’t_ move on. It was as if she was stuck between this suspended place of mourning and coexisting in an area that she wanted to preserve her time with Lisa.

_It was always going to rain in Thailand._

It was always going to be painful living with Lisa’s death and whether Jennie chose to move on or not, she couldn’t ignore the fact that in her timeline, Lisa was dead. She was not ever going to come back.

_“But...but what if- what if you could? Avoid the rain...I mean.”_

_“I would do it in a heartbeat.”_

Jennie had that opportunity now. She was lying in this bed, waiting out this storm that she had already experienced and listening to a story that Lisa had already told her. But now, she was equipped with the ability to prevent the rain...to prevent Lisa’s death from ever happening. 

She had to do this.

She didn’t have any other options, nothing left. 

Lisa was prepared that day to walk home even if it meant she would be soaked, even if she was afraid and knew that at some point she would reach her home. She would have done it. That in part, was the reason why she and Lisa were so different from each other. Jennie didn’t need to be prepared for the outcome because she had already experienced it. She had experienced what life was like without Lisa in it. She had experienced the pain that she felt waking up each morning and praying to a God that she didn’t believe in, that he would take her one day too. She had experienced the physical toll that it took on her body when she had no interest in living anymore. She had experienced what would happen at the end of this week when Lisa was killed by that car. 

She didn’t- she _couldn’t_ \- go through that again. Lisa was someone who could weather anything; despite her fears, she would do it regardless of the outcome. Jennie wasn’t like that at all. She couldn’t weather death, she couldn’t weather the fear of losing Lisa, and she couldn’t adapt- she just couldn’t. Not to a life that Lisa wasn’t apart of. 

“I hate the rain,” Lisa muttered. 

“I hate it too.”

Lisa pulled back to tilt Jennie’s face up and with the lightning outside, she could clearly see the features of her face and the slight uptick of her mouth as she grinned at her.


	3. across the universe

**May 21st**

**Tuesday**

**03:01:25:44**

Jennie stands outside of the bathroom, her shoulder pressed up against the doorframe as she watches Lisa shower. The steam from the water fogs up the glass so Jennie can only make out her silhouette as she stands underneath the showerhead and washes her hair. For a few minutes, she actually contemplated joining her, pulling off her work clothes and stumbling into the crowded space so they could wash each other's back and kiss under the spray of the water and feel at every inch of skin until it pruned under the moisture. 

She didn’t though, instead, choosing to stand by and admire from afar. 

Lisa always did this thing whenever she was alone in the shower- sing to herself, and no matter how cold the water had turned she would sing until she was at the last note, until she had belted out every verse. 

This time wasn’t any different as she started humming to herself quietly before singing louder as she started to wash her hair.

_You were the luckiest girl alive_

_And I was to call you my friend_

_You was who I was who you was_

_And we loved_

_You ain't got but so many fucks to give_

_One life…_

When Lisa had finished singing to herself and shut the water off, Jennie moved from her spot against the doorframe to grab down a towel and bring it to her. She rapped her knuckles against the glass gently, stifling a smile when the younger girl jumped and used her hand to wipe away the condensation on the glass. When she smiled at her, all slicked-back hair and water clinging to her eyelashes, Jennie’s heart did this weird stuttering before it picked back up again and resumed normal function.

_Lisa is so beautiful, she thought to herself._

She wanted to tell her that- she should have told her that, but somewhere between the words actually being formulated and leaving her mouth, it disappeared when Lisa slid the door back and thanked her before grabbing the towel. 

“How come you didn’t join me?” she asked running the towel over her head. 

Jennie stepped back and shook her head. “You were almost done anyway.”

Lisa made a face and wrapped the material around her chest, stepping out of the shower and leaning forward to kiss Jennie on the mouth. One kiss, however, turned into another one and then another one until the older girl was laughing and pushing Lisa away by her shoulders. 

“Stupid,” Jennie giggled. “Do you want me to blow dry your hair for you?”

Lisa was already pulling out the blow dryer from the bottom cabinet so Jennie rolled her eyes as she followed her out and went to plug it into the wall. From the open window across the room, she could hear the sound of people talking as they walked through the alley, the sound of cicadas on the branches outside and a dog barking distantly. 

“You used the detangler shampoo, right? Your hair gets knotted so easily.”

“Yes, _mom_.”

Jennie pinched her side, laughing when Lisa yelped and shot her a glare over her shoulder. 

“I can’t blow dry your hair if you keep moving,” she snickered, turning her around by the shoulders and using her legs to keep Lisa pinned against the bed. 

The younger girl grumbled but didn’t protest when Jennie turned the blow dryer on and began running it through her hair.

 

**03:04:55:44**

 

“I can’t pick you up from work tomorrow because I dropped the car off at the shop.”

“You mean I’ll have to take the subway?” Jennie groaned. 

Lisa laughed, looking up from where she was chopping carrots on the cutting board. “Sorry, babe.”

Jennie slumped down against the counter, pushing her cheek onto the cold tile as Lisa moved the carrots to a separate plate and started slicing the potatoes in half. 

“I hate riding the subway.”

“When I get the car out of the shop, I can teach you how to drive again, if you want.”

Jennie looked up at Lisa, watching as she turned around to put the vegetables into the pot of boiling water and then grab the bag of onions off the counter to take one out. 

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she shrugged. 

When she turned around, her mouth was lifted up in a small smile and the top of her ears were slightly red, like if she was embarrassed. 

“Last time we tried that, it was a disaster, though.”

Jennie remembers about a month ago when they had sat in the parking lot of a department warehouse, the street lights bathing the asphalt as a rock song played in the background, the volume turned down low while Lisa explained what each gear shift did. When they had finally switched seats, Jennie had been so nervous that she tuned out what Lisa was saying to her about how much gas she should give it, that she ended up lurching the car forward and then slamming on the brakes so hard that the tires screeched. 

Needless to say, by the end of it, Lisa was frustrated, Jennie was terrified, and both of them agreed that they should give the driving lessons a break for now. 

“I don’t know,” Jennie murmured and looked down at the counter as she began tracing small circles. “I’ll think about that, okay?”

Lisa smiled and nodded, going back to dicing the onion on the plate before she added that to the pot and went to the fridge, pulling out the meat that she had cut up earlier and adding it to the pot. When she put the lid over it, she went to wash her hands at the sink and then dried them off with the towel on the counter before walking around the island to nudge Jennie.

“Wanna make out for a little bit?”

Jennie snorts, pulling herself up slowly and laughing when Lisa whines about how unenthusiastic she looks (“to make out with me!”) but tugs her closer by her hips, her fingers slipping underneath her shirt to feel the skin there. Jennie makes a sound in the back of her throat when Lisa bends down to nose at her cheek, her breath fanning against her skin as she circles her hands around Lisa’s neck letting her wrists hang lazily over her shoulders. 

When Lisa presses a small kiss to the edge of her jaw, Jennie sighed contently, her eyes closing as Lisa pulled her further into her embrace and pressed her lips down the column of her neck. Jennie shifts slightly so her back is pressed against the counter and Lisa follows her, her body always attuned with the way she moves, before she’s sliding her hands further up her back and feeling the soft skin there. 

Jennie tightens her arms around Lisa’s neck and laughs when the younger girl pushes at her thighs before wrapping her hands around her and lifting her onto the counter. In this position, they’re on the same eye level with each other and Lisa crowds into her space to place a kiss on her nose before moving to press their lips together. Jennie can taste the grapefruit ade on her tongue and she can’t help but smile when Lisa lightly bites down on her bottom lip before tugging on it.

“Such a puppy,” she mutters. 

“Your puppy,” Lisa hums and kisses her back as Jennie licks her way into her mouth. It’s slow at first, not the frantic and open-mouthed kissing that would have them stumbling onto the nearest piece of furniture or pulling the other’s clothes off. 

When Lisa squeezes her waist, Jennie giggles and turns her head away to kiss the side of her neck, inhaling the scent of her body wash and the oil that she had rubbed into her skin. 

“The curry,” Jennie whispers. 

Lisa groans, mumbling words into her skin, but begrudgingly complies when she pulls away to head back to the stove. Jennie hops off the counter and watches as Lisa opens the pot and takes out the curry tablets from the tray and tosses them in. She stirs the contents gently and turns the heat down before putting the lid back over it.

Jennie grabs some plates, glasses out of the cabinet, and silverware out of the drawer to set the table. When she goes to the fridge, she reaches for the bottle of water on the shelf and moves to pour some in both glasses. 

“Is this okay, babe?”

Lisa is stirring the curry, the heat from the pot warming her face when Jennie walks over to her side and watches as she scoops up a piece of meat and blows on it, directing the spoon to Jennie’s mouth. Jennie chews slowly, careful not to burn her tongue, and nods her head as she swallows the meat. 

“It’s good.”

As Lisa turns the stove off and moves the pot to the table, Jennie brings the bowls of rice to the table as well and goes back to the fridge for the radish and spicy cucumber. Both girls are silent when Jennie spoons some curry from the pot onto both of their plates and Lisa picks some kimchi up with her chopsticks to put in her mouth. 

They ate in relative silence, the only sounds coming from their chopsticks scraping against the plates, Lisa slurping from her spoon, and Jennie picking out carrots from the pot to put on her plate. Lisa has always been the faster eater between the two of them, so when she scoops a large spoonful of curry into her mouth, her cheeks bunching with the effort, Jennie laughs with a small shake of her head. 

“You’re gonna choke one of these days.” 

Lisa rolls her eyes, her mouth too full to speak as she swallows and reaches for her water. 

“That day is not today,” she grins. 

When she’s done, Lisa pushes her plate away and scoots her chair closer to Jennie, poking her in the cheek when the older girl spoons some rice into her mouth. Jennie lets her mess with her, rubbing her thigh underneath the table and kissing her shoulder repeatedly, but when she attempts to bite her arm, Jennie smacks her on the leg, a whine slipping out of her mouth. 

“Quit it.”

Lisa laughs and relents, leaning her elbow on the table to prop her chin up and watch Jennie. When Jennie finishes eating and scrapes the last of the curry out of the bottom of the pot, she smiles around the spoon in her mouth as Lisa leans forward, pulling the spoon away to kiss her. 

“Good?”

“Yeah,” she hums. “It was yummy.”

“We’re talking about the food, right?” she raises an eyebrow. 

“Yes, Lisa,” Jennie smiles and rolls her eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**May 22nd**

**Wednesday**

**02:08:11:33**

“Your hair is so long. You don’t want to get it permed?”

Jennie looks up at her mom, watching her as she strokes the back of her head and tucks a few strands behind her ear. The sunshine from the window bathes the living room in warm shades of yellow and white, enough to warm her fingertips and highlight the youthful features of her mother’s face. 

“I’m sure, maybe some other time, mom.”

She nods and moves to get up from the couch, walking into the kitchen where she can hear Lisa talking to her father and the sound of the fridge opening. It feels weird to hear all three of their voices together, to listen to the way Lisa laughs and the sound of her father’s low voice talking amongst her mother’s light nagging. 

She cranes her neck to look into the kitchen and it’s funny how she wishes she had an eidetic memory so she could ingrain this into her head. She wants to remember the tender way Lisa’s body occupies space around her parents. At the gentle way that she holds her father’s forearm when he talks to her, both of them looking intently at the other and Lisa’s eyes following his movements when he begins talking with his hands. Almost unconsciously, when her mother moves to grab down the glasses overhead in the cabinet, Lisa briefly pauses in the conversation that she’s having with her father to reach for it and give them to her mother.

She’s always like that, always cognizant of the people around her no matter what she’s doing. Jennie swallows that lump forming in her throat, making it hard for her to process that this scenario isn’t apart of her present. The way they look in the kitchen, how easily they talk to one another built over years of communication, and the way that her father always smiles small and satisfied when her girlfriend laughs at his jokes. 

The bubble only breaks when they leave the kitchen, following her mother out with a tray of drinks and bowls of fruit that her dad had picked this morning from their garden. Lisa takes her spot next to her, slinging her arm over the back of the couch so she can hold her shoulder.

“You need to visit us more often, Cheongdamn-dong isn’t that far from Seoul,” her mother says. 

“It’s because of my job,” Lisa says quickly. “My schedule is always packed and Jennie always talks about coming to see you two but we never carve out any time.”

Jennie watches her, as do her parents, her mom, more so about the truth in Lisa’s statement and Jennie would laugh right now but that wouldn’t do any good. _Jennie’s_ job is the reason why she and Lisa have trouble visiting her parents. _Jennie_ is the one that’s always undoubtedly bringing her work back home, cramming in a few extra hours of overtime, or having to cover a colleague at odd times throughout the week. 

It’s not that Lisa is the one keeping them from coming, it’s her, but Lisa would never say that, not out loud to her parents at least. 

“Your photography business must be doing really well then,” she murmurs. 

“It is,” Lisa nods and beams proudly. “Way better than last year. That’s why with both of our savings we were able to get a car. Speaking of a car, I tried to teach Jennie how to drive…”

The conversation lulls into a discussion of vehicle safety, the few disastrous times Lisa and Jennie practiced in an empty parking lot, and the model of their car, which Jennie tunes out. Instead, she adds a comment in where she can, laughs at something her father says, and sips at the ice tea that her mom made. 

“Do you think about it?” her mom asks, snapping her out of thoughts. 

“What?”

Lisa snickers as her mom rolls her eyes with a sigh. “I said, do you think about it?”

“Think...about what?”

“Kids,” her father answered, sitting up in the chair and folding his hands in his lap. “Your mother and I have talked about it a lot. You two should get married soon, you’ve been together for a while. Then you can look into adopting.”

“A grandchild to call our own would be nice,” her mother says. 

“Dad,” Lisa interjects. “We’re still young...we have a lot of time to think about that-”

“All of my friends show me pictures of their grandkids every time we meet to see each other. I only show them pictures of you two,” she frowns. “At least consider it okay?”

Lisa looks at her and Jennie already knows how this conversation is going to go. She takes a deep breath and shifts on the couch so she can fully face her mother. 

“We talked about this already, mom. We want to wait a little bit longer until we’re ready for that. We like how life is right now and I know-” she says quickly, interrupting her mom who opens her mouth. “That you guys want a grandkid but we need more time, okay?”

Her mother frowns, obviously not happy with that answer, but turns toward her husband who shoots her an apologetic smile. 

“How much time?”

“At least...six years…”

Her mother scoffs, waving her hand in the air as her father starts laughing and both girls sigh, Jennie more loudly because she was expecting this reaction. 

“Six years?!”

“I could be dead in six years!”

“You’re _fifty,_ mom,” Jennie frowned. “Stop being dramatic.”

“Fifty is the new seventy!” her father added. “I read it in Men’s Health magazine at the dentist’s office. We could go any day now without any grandchildren!”

Her mother nods her head and Jennie rolls her eyes, her head tipping back onto the couch as she pinches the bridge of her nose. She can feel Lisa’s hand on her thigh and the pressure as she squeezes her in what’s meant to give her reassurance, but it doesn’t; not when her parents are being overbearing like this.

“Fifty is _not_ the new seventy,” she stresses to her father. “Lisa and I will have kids when we're ready, okay? Not when you guys want us to have kids. I know you want grandchildren and I _want_ to give you that.” Her mom scoffs at that but Jennie continues, knowing that she does but that it has to be on their time. “We will give you guys grandchildren, just not right now and you have to be okay with that. This is our decision.”

Her mother huffs but relents, picking up a piece of strawberry and eating it as her father takes a sip from his drink. 

“Not in six years, though-”

“Yes, in six years, mom.”

She huffs again, standing up quickly and moving to the kitchen. “Why do I even bother,” she grumbles.

 

**02:06:43:17**

 

While her parents work on dinner, Jennie takes Lisa to her old bedroom, pushing the door open and taking a minute to look at everything that’s still the same as she left it nearly three years ago. The posters of SHINee and Day6 above her bed on the wall, a stack of old books on her dresser next to a Vogue magazine with Park Shin-Hye on the cover. The faded cotton candy comforter is tucked underneath the mattress, the smell of detergent wafting through the air, and Lisa laughs at the Funko Marvel dolls pushed into the corner of her room on the floor.

“And you said you hated Iron Man,” Lisa snickered, bending down to pick up the miniature figure. 

“Shut up,” she smiled and playfully pushed her away as she walked over to her desk and touched the pictures tacked on the wall. 

There were photos of her with friends from high school, some of them in front of her house, some taken in her room, and most of them on campus, of Jennie smiling with a mouth full of braces. 

Lisa fell back on her bed, the mattress bouncing as she leaned back against the pillows and put her hands behind her head. The soft yellow curtains blew slightly from the half-opened window and she crossed the room, peeking out to see the garden in the backyard and the creek that she used to run through when she was younger. 

“C’mere,” Lisa murmured. 

Jennie turned away and rolled her eyes as the younger girl wiggled her eyebrows and made a beckoning motion with her hands. 

“I feel like a teenager.”

The mattress creaked as she kneeled down, crawling over Lisa’s legs until she was able to seat herself on her lap. 

“Did you ever bring girls home?” 

Lisa's fingers ran across the material of her jeans before gripping her waist and tugging at the loops on her pants. 

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like that,” she snorted. “I didn’t come out to my parents until I was in college so they didn’t care if I brought friends home.”

“So...did you do anything on this bed?”

“No!” Jennie laughed slapping her on the chest. “I didn’t have like a girlfriend or anything. Besides, I would have been too scared anyway.”

Lisa laughed and leaned up on her elbows, thumbing at the rip in Jennie’s jeans where the skin of her knee was showing. With her other hand, she slipped it underneath her shirt, feeling the skin at the small of her back and pressing her fingertips into the flesh. 

“Same,” Lisa snorted. 

“Your parents are more open-minded than mine, though. I can’t imagine them being phased by anything you do honestly.”

“My mom knew that I was gay before I did,” Lisa said. “So she wouldn’t even let me bring girls up to my room, not that I would, but I should have noticed the signs earlier.”

Jennie laughed, pushing on her arms gently until Lisa loosened her grip so she could slide off of her lap and lay down beside her. With the wall pressed against her back, Lisa crowded even closer to her, her nose bumping against her own as she pushed her leg in between her thighs. 

“Can you imagine if we would have met each other in high school?” she whispered. 

“Oh God,” Jennie smiled. “Not really, I mean, I don’t know. I was very quiet in high school and my mom was really set on me being apart of the mathletes club so I practically dedicated all of my high school years to it.”

“And then you became a writer,” Lisa laughed. 

“Go figure, huh?”

Lisa kissed her forehead and sighed softly, her hand moving to feel along her thigh. “I hated high school. I actually skipped a lot to hang out at the mall or go to the movies with my friends. When I started getting phone calls to my house, my dad found out and I got in so much trouble. They would drop me off at school and pick me up.”

“No wonder why you’re so dumb,” Jennie laughed. 

Lisa frowned at her and Jennie cackled, moving to kiss her as a way of apologizing, but Lisa turned her head away, whining when Jennie only laughed louder and wrestled her way on top of her. 

“I’m kidding!”

“Shut up.”

Jennie pushed her face into Lisa’s neck and laughed softly, kissing the skin there and wiggling on top of her until Lisa caved and jabbed her in the side with a finger. 

“I could have tutored you,” Jennie murmured. “Like in math or something.”

“You were probably a bad tutor,” Lisa mumbled. “You have no patience.”

Jennie punched her on the arm, Lisa choking as she attempted to shove her further away from her. “Ow!”

“Take that back!”

“No! You take it back first,”

“Fine! You’re not stupid.”

“And you’re not a bad tutor!”

Both girls stared at each other for a minute before breaking out in laughter and Jennie liked this. She liked the easy way they could laugh with each other. She didn’t have that anymore, at least not with Lisa out of her life. The way they would make fun of the other or randomly start laughing at something they had said, it was one of the things that Jennie missed the most about her- the way she always made her laugh. 

When they both calmed down, Lisa knocked her forehead gently against her own and softly kissed her nose. 

“We ran in totally different circles, though. I doubt we would have met each other.”

“Probably,” Jennie sighed. She stares at Lisa, watching as her eyes close lazily with the soft whirring of the fan and moved her hand to trace the outline of her eyebrow with her finger. She imagined Lisa with wild blonde hair, her gangly limbs, and that loud laugh that always made everyone smile.

“I would have brought you home,” Jennie whispered. 

Lisa laughed, kissing her on the mouth and moving her hand so she could grip her neck. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jennie nodded. 

The younger girl moved her mouth to the edge of her jaw, kissing the skin there and running her hand along the skin of her back. Jennie felt goosebumps rise along her skin as her fingers skimmed over her and she grabbed Lisa’s face directing her mouth back to her own as she kissed her softly. 

“I’m glad I met you,” she breathes between their open mouths. 

It feels slightly pathetic to say out loud and like this, but Jennie needs her to know that. On some level, she also needs to hear herself say that because she is. She’s glad that she got to meet this girl in college, glad that she got to know her and all of her idiosyncrasies. She’s glad that she knows the movies that she likes, and her favorite pizza, and those ugly Spongebob boxers that she can’t sleep without. 

“Me too,” Lisa whispers, her breath hot and her lips barely grazing Jennie’s own. “Me too.”

 

**02:04:55:23**

 

“I’m sorry if your father and I were too forceful earlier,” her mother murmurs next to her. 

Jennie pauses in scrubbing the edge of the plate in her hands, the soap falling from her gloves as she turns to look at her mother. 

“You weren’t,” she shook her head. 

“Yes, we were.”

When she makes a gesture for Jennie to continue what she’s doing, she finishes scrubbing the plate and hands it to her mom so she can rinse it off and dry it with the dishtowel. 

“It’s just that you guys have been together for four years. I would have thought by now that you would at least be married.”

“We want to get married,” Jennie says, squirting some more soap onto the rag before reaching down for one of the cups. 

“But we want to save up more money first.”

“Money is not a problem, you know that. We would gladly pay for the wedding and the ceremony,” she frowns. 

“It’s not just that, ma. It’s about getting a bigger place and changing our lifestyle. We’re just not ready for all that.”

“But in _six years_ you will?” she sighs loudly. “That’s such a long time from now. When I met your dad, we were together for a year before we got married and then six months later, I was pregnant with you. No big lifestyle changes,” she waves her hand. “Just another person to look after.”

Jennie snorts, handing the cup to her mom and reaching for another dish. 

“Well, things were different in ‘96 compared to now.”

“Tell me about it,” she shook her head. 

“I guess I’m not as worried because I know that you will eventually, even if I’m not happy with it,” her mother said after a brief moment of silence.

“Is that the only reason why you’re not worried?”

Jennie unplugs the stopper, watching the soapy water go down the drain and pulls the gloves off of her hands to lay it beside the sink. 

“No, but I see the way that Lisa looks at you- the way you look at each other- I know she wants it too.”

She wants to see her mother’s face but she’s turned her back, busy wiping down the stove with the Lysol wipes from the container. Jennie wrings the bottom of her shirt between her hands, biting down on her bottom lip as she shakes her head. 

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” she says over her shoulder. “Lisa, she looks at you like the way your father looks at me. You do, too.”

“That girl loves you.”

She turns around, tossing the wipes in the trash and moves to wash her hands in the sink.

“She loves you, Jennie. So yes, I’m not as worried because as long as she keeps looking at you like that- both of you- keep looking at each other like that, then I know that whenever you do decide to settle down and start a family, it will be okay.”

 _But it won’t_ , Jennie wants to tell her.

She can feel her eyes well up with tears that she doesn’t want to shed. Her fingers grab a hold of her shirt, her nails digging through the material until it feels like she might rip right through the cotton.

_It won’t be okay._

That sentiment burns in the back of her throat but it’s even harder to swallow it down because it’s true. She wants to tell her mom that they’ve already had this conversation before. She wants to tell her that the future that her parents had so wistfully clung to for them is one that will vanish on Friday. She wants to tell her that things don’t work out like that anymore, that because of Jennie and because of her failure to stop what she was sent back in time to do, that they won’t ever get that chance. 

They won’t have a wedding in front of all their friends and family members. They won’t get that grandchild to fawn over and spoil and show pictures of to their friends. They won’t get any of that and it’s not fair. It’s just not fucking _fair._

“Why do you have that look on your face?” her mother asks, laying a hand against her cheek. 

She must look ashamed because that’s how she feels. She probably looks pathetic because that’s also how she feels. 

Instead of voicing that, all Jennie does is shake her head, squeezing her eyes shut so she doesn’t have to look at her mom. So she doesn’t have to look at her face and see all of the disappointment that she knows she’s going to cause her. 

Jennie doesn’t even realize she’s crying until her mom is wiping her cheeks with her fingertips, letting out a low sound in the back of her throat as she attempts to figure out what’s wrong. 

“Jennie?”

What does she tell her? That in two days Lisa is going to be killed and all this time, this entire week that she was given, that she was supposed to change things- fix things to make it right again, that she couldn’t even do that. How does she explain that she doesn’t belong to this universe? That in her world, where Lisa is dead, that she also died that day too. That the thought of being around people makes her sick. That the thought of moving on makes her physically want to vomit. That she can’t stand her body anymore now that Lisa isn’t there to kiss the inside of her elbow or push her hair over her shoulder or tuck her head underneath her chin. 

There’s so much pain bottled up inside of her that she didn’t realize that she took with her when she went back in time. Jennie didn’t realize that coming back here would bring back everything that she held close to her chest in the future. She didn’t know that even when Lisa was sleeping next to her that it felt like she was going to wake up and realize that she was gone. She didn’t know that the anger that simmered inside of her whenever Lisa cooked or feed her spoonfuls of cereal was because she didn’t have that in her universe. 

Everything here- in their apartment, in Cheongdamn-dong, amongst their friends- is like a painful reminder of what she doesn’t have back in her own world. All of the time that she spent here lounging in bed, sharing a shower with Lisa, watching her sleep, having sex on the couch, and laughing at her jokes- all of that was just so she could satisfy herself. She spent so much of their time just trying to be together with her that she lost sight of how she was going to make this right. 

And now? Now it was Wednesday and in less than 48 hours she was going to lose the absolute love of her life because she couldn’t do anything right. It was like watching someone get hit by a car and becoming numb at the sight because you had seen the car beforehand, you just didn’t say anything about it. 

“I’m going to disappoint you,” she cries, her head dipping down as her mother cradles her face between her hands. Her own voice sounds strange to her and that could be due to the snot clogging her nose and the very precipice of what feels like her heart is dangling from. 

“No you won’t,” she scoffs. “Why would you even say that?”

 _Because I’ve seen it,_ she wants to say.

She wants to tell her that her mother in the future is scared of her. That she doesn’t have the same body that she does now. That her head and her heart hurts in ways she can’t physically explain. That she’s going to hole herself in her apartment and never step foot outside of it again. That when Lisa died, every dream, every emotion, every hope that Jennie had within herself also died that day too. She wants to tell her that she doesn’t think her mom will ever bring up marriage or children around her again. That the thought of a grandchild is unfathomable, a pipe dream that vanishes with her girlfriend. Jennie wants her mother to know how badly she screwed up, how messed up everything became in her life when she decided to love Lisa, when she decided to stick with her, when she decided that her entire well-being was intrinsically connected to Lisa. 

“You could never disappoint me,” she says fiercely. “Do you hear me? Never!” 

Her hands jostle Jennie slightly, like she wants to physically shake those words into her daughter’s head. She wants to believe her, she really does but she can’t. She can’t take that sentiment and trust her mother at her word because she already has. 

Ever since she made a conscious decision to come back to the past and try to do things over, she’s disappointed her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**May 23rd**

**Thursday**

**01:1:48:03**

 

After seeing her parents and coming to the realization that she can’t- that she won’t change anything, but that she’s reliving her nightmare all over again, Jennie’s mood only plummets further. Lisa catches on to it, asking her if she’s okay while they eat cereal on the couch and kissing her a few times before she has to leave for a session.

_“What’s wrong?”_

_“Nothing’s wrong.”_

_“Why do you lie to me? Don’t you know by now that I can see right through that?”_

For a while, she toils in the apartment, picking up the laundry and hanging it up on the clothesline, rearranging the stack of movies on their shelf in alphabetical order, and then sitting on the floor staring at the photos that they framed of themselves over the years. The longer she sits in that apartment looking at their things, looking at Lisa’s space in her world, and all of her little knick-knacks and the sunshine that filters in through the curtains, the more her irritation grows.

She’s so upset that she nearly flings the frame in her hand, one of Lisa with her back to her as she walked along the sand in Busan. When she stands up abruptly, she sets the picture frame back on the mantle and stalks back into her room, pulling jeans on over her underwear and slipping a T-shirt on underneath a ratty, grey Law & Order SVU sweatshirt. 

She has to go somewhere, anywhere that is other than this apartment because Jennie feels like if she stays here any longer, she’s going to collapse. She shoves her things into a tote bag and slips her arm through the straps before toeing her sneakers on and banging open the door of their apartment. 

The outside heat makes the air thick, enough to have Jennie out of breath and uncomfortable as she meanders down the street and pushes her herself through the stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk. The sun casts a dim glow along the pavement, creating shadows out of people and making sweat cling to the back of her neck and sticking some of her hair that had gotten loose from her bun, to her skin. Unwilling to venture down into the subway station, Jennie wanders for what feels like hours just simply walking to pass the time and get as far away as she can from the apartment. 

The bottom of her feet aches when she looks up at the storefronts across the street. Some buildings with windows containing an advert for a new cosmetic line, a coffee shop full of people talking at their tables and laughing over drinks and the soft music that drifts outside the door. She wonders what those people are doing now. If that guy in the yellow pullover is still writing on his laptop like he is now by the window or if the woman stroking her round stomach had her child already and whether it was a girl or a boy. 

At the end of the street, she’s huddled among the crowd, her shoulders brushing up against others as they wait for the pedestrian light to turn on. Her fingers dig into the strap of her bag and when she shifts her weight onto her other leg, her hip screams in protest, enough for her to wince and clutch at the area as if she could will it away. When the light turns, she moves with the crowd, shuffling forward without any real direction or purpose but simply moving in order to push herself away. 

When the sun dips low enough that the glare of it burns her eyes, she walks down an alleyway and shoulders past a group of girls laughing at something on their cell phone. She ends up at a bookstore, the outside brick wall displaying flyers for a reading at seven o’clock and a new hardcover copy of a poetry selection that’s on stands now. She pushes open the door, the bell jingling above her head and alerting the girl at the register who looks up and offers a soft greeting. Jennie maneuvers around tables stacked with books, planners, and stationery, before climbing the narrow staircase up to the second level where there are reading nooks, private rooms, and a wall of bookcases that shields the other side of the store.

She sits down on one of the couches against the wall, dropping her bag on the floor and with that, the weight of her emotions that all come crashing down as her head sinks into her hands. 

She feels like crying, like that would somehow ease the pain of what she feels inside of herself. Maybe if she cried hard enough she could suffocate or choke and die right on this couch. Maybe if she cried hard enough she can erase the entire week that she was here and move past the pain that came with coming back here.

_Was it a mistake? To come back at least?_

She finds that thought simmering in the back of her head as she squeezes her eyes shut. Not only was she given the opportunity to relive all of those moments that she had made with Lisa, but she was also doing it at the expense of her own mental capability. 

She wasn’t going to bring Lisa back. That was clear more than ever to her now. After visiting her parents, after sleeping on it, and the walk here made it all the more apparent to her. She didn’t know what she was looking for, she didn’t know what she was supposed to stop. How could she have come back here only to relive all these moments and go back to her normal life as if it didn’t happen? That was the problem, she couldn’t. Jennie knew that she couldn’t do that. It was too much, it was too sweet. 

After making love with her more times than she could count, listening to her heartbeat against her ear as she slept and watching her make cereal in the morning in their favorite bowls; it was going to kill her to go back to her solitary life. 

Deep down within her bones, almost to the core of her flesh she could feel that this wouldn’t end well. She could feel herself losing hope not only for Lisa but for whatever happened to her after she went back to her time. 

The thought of doing something reckless and incredibly dangerous should have frightened her, it should have scared the shit out of her, but oddly it felt like a weight lifting itself off of her chest. When she took a deep breath, it hurt, yes that was to be expected, but it was a flicker of pain compared to the stabbing jest that she was used to. 

If she was going to go back to that apartment, she was going to get everything in order. She was going to finish the manuscripts that still needed to be edited on her desk. She was going to take all of her money out of her savings account and send it to her parents. She would clean the apartment and throw out all of the food, pack up all of the things that she wanted her parents to keep and send the rest of the stuff to a second-hand store or donate it. 

If she was going to do this, if she was _really_ going to do this she had to make sure it was clean, quick, and simple. Her parents wouldn’t be happy about it, oh, of course not, but Jennie had to live with that. She had to live with them acknowledging that it was too hard for her. That the thought of waking up another day without Lisa’s back pressed against her own or her shampoo wafting throughout the apartment elicited a pain that she couldn’t describe. 

She couldn’t look at their photos back home without tearing up, she couldn’t eat anymore without feeling like she was going to vomit, she couldn’t sleep because all she saw was Lisa all the time. It was like a reel of film rewinding itself over and over again. It was nauseating, it was sweet, and it was terrible all at once. 

Being back here with Lisa, getting to experience all of that again, only brought back every emotion to the forefront of her mind until it was the only thing she could think about. She just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it anymore. If this week made her come to terms with anything, it was that she wasn’t as strong as Lisa. It was that she didn’t know how to survive without the younger girl and as unhealthy as it was, it’s the truth. 

Back home, she was falling apart, literally. She wasn’t the same girl that Lisa had fallen in love with and if she was, then she was buried somewhere underneath all the stress and the pain and the anger. 

Thinking this over in her head only makes her even sadder than she was when she arrived, so it doesn’t surprise her when she feels water slip through her fingers and land on the carpet. When she pulls her hands away, they’re slick from her crying and she bites down on her bottom lip to keep from sobbing and drawing any attention to herself.

 _I shouldn’t have come back_ , she thinks to herself.

Jennie lays her head against the back of the couch and stares at the ceiling as tears slide into her hairline. This week only made it worse for her. It only solidified what she didn’t have at home, what she would never have at home. And as much as she tries to stop herself from making any noise, it seems like her chest won’t allow to her. She can hear herself sobbing, feeling as her hands shake in her lap and her vision becomes blurry the longer she stares at the ceiling.

The pain feels like that day that she sat in front of Lisa’s tombstone at the cemetery. When she had been so distraught with grief that she was desperate, that she was yelling at thin air and clawing the grass with her fingers as if she could dig Lisa back up. As if she could crawl into her casket and resurrect her from the dead. It feels like that same ache that was brewing inside of her and had no way to come out. 

It’s a feeling of hopelessness. Pure, unadulterated hopelessness. 

And she hates herself for it. She hates herself for being so weak. She hates that she can’t move on from Lisa; that this girl is inexplicably tied to her well-being and she physically and emotionally cannot let her go. She hates that her friends and all of their families can move on as if Lisa was just another person. She wasn’t just any person, though. She was - is - the love of her life. She is the girl that Jennie had spent countless years learning to love and then even more time hoping to know everything about her so she could love her even more. 

She is everything that Jennie had ever wanted in a partner. She was a listener, she was generous, she was funny, and she was so kind. She was kind to every single person she had ever met and that, more than anything, is what drew Jennie to her. It was like drawing a moth to an open flame. That’s why it was so hard to let her go, to live a life that she wasn’t apart of. Because Jennie _knew,_ she knew that she would never find someone like that again. She would never meet an individual that would measure up to even half of what Lisa was. Lisa was one of a kind and without her, Jennie couldn’t exist. It was like taking away water, like taking away oxygen, it was physically killing her. 

No matter how much her mother visited, no matter how long she went to go live with her parents, no matter what happened in her life, she would never be able to get rid of this pain. She knew that. She knew that the moment she found out Lisa died and she knew that when she came back here. 

All this time that she had spent enjoying every second with Lisa had become a catalyst for to realize that she couldn’t do it without her. 

“Can I offer you a tissue?”

Jennie startled at the voice above her, sitting up abruptly and coming face to face with…

“Jisoo?”

The woman beamed, her smile overtaking half of her face much like that day that she had met her at the cemetery. She was wearing the same white dress as before but her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and she had a box of tissues clutched to her chest. 

Without waiting for a response, she bounded over to the couch, her steps light as air, before she kneeled down and gently dabbed at Jennie’s cheeks. Her movements were careful but also quick as she focused on one side of her face intently before moving to the other. 

Jennie hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath until Jisoo eyes flickered up to her own and she stood up, taking a step back. 

“I can see that you’re sad,” she murmured. Her eyes looked like she was trying to be sympathetic but her demeanor was struggling with that. Maybe she didn’t have it in her to be sad, the inability to feel anything but happiness must be beautiful. 

“Why are you here?” Jennie asks. 

She already knows that she’s failed. Even if she has an entire 24 hours left, it already feels like this is the end. She doesn’t need Jisoo to tell her that or express faux regret over allowing her to come back here. 

“You haven’t completed-”

“I know that!” Jennie snaps. “Don’t you think I fucking know that?!” 

She feels hot tears gather in her eyes and she wills herself to hold it in, to not let Jisoo see her like this anymore. 

Jisoo looks down at her bare feet, her toes wiggling against the carpet before she sighs and looks back up.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she pauses and licks her lips slowly. “I came to check up on you but I can see that all is not well.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Jennie rolled her eyes. She wipes at her cheeks and curls her hands into her fists at her side. 

She wants this to be over already. She just wants to go home and start her plan and wait for this to all be over. She wants to rest, she’s tired, she’s just so tired of everything right now. 

“I want to go home,” Jennie looks up at her. “Take me home. I don’t know how, but I need to go back. I can’t stay here because I feel helpless. I feel like absolute shit and I can’t change anything. It was a mistake for me to come here.”

Saying it out loud to someone else, actually hearing those words come out of her mouth makes a bad taste curl around her throat. It feels like someone dumping acid down her mouth and forcing her to swallow it. She can feel herself wanting to cry again and she can feel the urge to just lay down in the fetal position and wait to die, almost consuming her. 

Jisoo twiddled her thumbs, staring at a spot behind Jennie’s head before she moved to sit down, her thigh pressing against Jennie’s own. She stares at Jennie’s hand for a long second before moving to smooth her fingertips over her knuckles and gently uncurls her fist so she can hold her hand. 

Jennie wants to pull away but she doesn’t, Jisoo’s grip is surprisingly strong, and the way her fingers encase her own makes her feel as if she won’t drop dead any second from now.

“When I saw you that day out there kneeling on the grass and crying, it made me feel lost,” she said slowly. “I really don’t know how to explain it but I felt something that I’ve never felt before. I don’t want to call it sadness because that’s not it- but it was sort of like a feeling of anxiousness. I felt like if I didn’t do something that it would bother me for the rest of my life.”

Jennie stares at her, watching as she looks ahead at the books on the shelf, probably seeing nothing but everything all at once. 

“I gave you this opportunity because I couldn’t see you just sitting there and _not_ do something, you know?” she turns to look at her. 

“I shouldn’t have taken it.”

“No,” Jisoo shakes her head. “You _should_ have. I think- and I really do believe- that you should have.”

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“I’m not,” she squeezes her hand. “I’m not wrong. You had to come back here to remember.”

“Do you honestly think I forgot?” Jennie scoffs. “Do you really think I don’t remember anything about her? I remember it all! Everything, it’s all in my head and it’s never coming out!”

Jisoo stares at her again and Jennie looks away, trying to gather her thoughts and calm down so someone doesn’t come over and see her shouting at no one. 

Her chest moves up and down with the rapid amount of oxygen she takes in but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It never feels like enough. 

“I remember, goddamnit I remember.”

“No you won’t,” Jisoo sighs. 

Jennie licks her lips and stares ahead before glancing at her. “What do you mean-”

“I need to show you something,” Jisoo says quietly. 

Before Jennie can open her mouth to speak, she feels the couch shake and the bookshelves and the tables rattle before morphing into complete darkness. Jisoo uses her other hand to touch the watch at Jennie’s wrist and the darkness opens up to their kitchen, where Jennie can see herself making coffee for Lisa on a day she can’t recognize.

_“Babe, do you know where I put my keys?” Lisa asks her._

 _“No!” Jennie shouts back._

“You tried to hide the keys from her,” Jisoo whispers. “So that she wouldn’t be out driving that day but she still found them.”

Jennie opens her mouth but she finds that nothing comes out when she does so. Instead, it’s silence. She feels dizzy and somewhat nauseous but that can’t be because she doesn’t remember this. She doesn’t remember doing this. 

“But I- I didn’t…”

“You did,” Jisoo nods. “You’ve already been back here you just don’t remember. Every time you go back and try to change the past, it affects the future. You won’t remember this because you couldn’t prevent her death. That’s why your future hasn’t changed.”

Jisoo presses the watch and the scene shifts again.

_Jennie is standing outside their apartment, leaning against the lamp post as she types out a message on her phone before sending it._

 _“Please read this,” she hears herself mumble._

“You tried to remind Lisa multiple times to pick up the car earlier but she always forgot.”

Jisoo presses the watch and the scene morphs to a funeral but instead of Jennie seeing herself sitting in the front, she sees Lisa and her head is downcast, her whole body shaking from the force of her sobs. On top of the casket, she sees a photo of herself. 

“You went to get the car instead, and it killed you, not her.”

Jisoo touches the watch and the scene shifts to a crowded streetway, a car, their car turned upside down with the windows smashed and the door on the other side of the road. The metal is completely torn apart and the black smoke that drifts up into the air clouds the sky, creating a void of color. 

“Lisa never took the car to the shop to get it fixed but she still died in a car accident.”

Jennie watches, unable to pull her eyes away from the girl that she can see suspended by the seat belt. That wild shock of blonde hair obscuring a face that she loves. She’s lifeless, unmoving as her hands hang upside down and blood drips onto the asphalt. 

Jisoo touches the watch and everything shifts back into place until they’re back in the library seated on the same couch. It takes her a while to gather her thoughts and process what she had just seen but when she does, Jisoo untangles her hand from her own and smooths down the front of her dress. 

“In every timeline that you’ve been to, the outcome is always the same. You can’t prevent Lisa’s death from happening one way or the other. Every time you try to intervene, the opposite outcome happens but the result still remains- she dies. Something is preventing her from being with you and it won’t allow-”

“It’s me,” Jennie whispers. 

Jisoo stops talking as Jennie blinks once and then twice before rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. 

“It’s me,” she nods. “I am the thing that’s preventing Lisa from surviving that accident. In every scenario, I try to change the circumstances but it doesn’t work. It’s me.”

Jennie swallows the bile that’s risen in her throat and takes a deep breath. 

“So why did you…”

“Why did I bring you back?”

“Yes,” Jennie nods. “Why did you bring me back if you knew I couldn’t change it?”

“Because I wanted you to remember her like this. I wanted you to know what loving her, being loved by her felt like. You needed to see what your life could be like with Lisa in it so you would be prepared to start over again.”

“A-Again- what?”

Jisoo smiles slightly and crosses her ankles. “Yes, again. If Lisa is to exist in any timeline then you and her can’t be together. It has to be as if you both never met. You have to start over again.”

Jennie stares at Jisoo for a long minute, taking in the expression on her face and the look in her eyes and the way her hands curl into a fist in her own lap. 

“How would that change anything? If we have to separate and find each other again, how would that change her not being in a car accident?”

“Because,” Jisoo licks her lips. “This universe won’t resemble any of the other ones. You’ll be two completely different people with completely different lives. The same thing can’t happen again if you start over. That changes the future.”

Jennie looks ahead at the spine of each book. She can recognize titles and the names but she can’t remember the story. Is that what this new timeline would be like? She could recognize the names and the people around here but not her story, their story?

“I’m scared,” she whispers. “What if we don’t get back together?”

If she doesn’t remember Lisa in the new timeline and they never meet, would it have been worse than actually knowing her and loving her and then losing her? Some people say that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all but Jennie disagrees. She knows what it felt like to love Lisa and then lose her. It nearly killed her and she can’t go through that again. But to exist in another timeline where they never meet, where they may never love each other, seems cruel on its own. 

“You will,” Jisoo nods her head. She reaches over and touches where Jennie’s heart should be underneath her clothes. 

“When you love someone as deeply as you two love each other, it’s impossible to separate that. There are some people that are just made for each other. Without the other, they don’t exist. Go find her,” she whispers and a small smile, like she’s hiding every secret in the entire universe, stretches across her face. 

“Go find her, so both of you can exist.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

**00:23:09:34**

 

_“You have something in your eye,”_

_“Oh, yeah?” Jennie laughs. “What is it?”_

_Lisa thumbs at the corner and looks down at her finger before blowing it away. “Hearts,” she smiles. “For me.”_

**00:04:00:06**

 

_“I watched you sleep last night.”_

_Jennie blinks the shadows out of her eyes and rubs her hand against her face. Her throat is dry and her skin feels flushed and hot, their legs tangled together underneath the blankets._

_“You’re such a weirdo.”_

_Lisa grins, her hair dripping over her shoulder before she leans down to press a kiss against her forehead._

_“Your weirdo,” she breathes._

**00:02:27:11**

 

_Jennie stares at Lisa, watching as she plays with her fingers in her lap. Her index and thumb rub the skin of her ring finger, tracing the bone and the lines that create patterns on her skin. She looks up at her at the same time that Lisa does, a quiet and slow smile stretching across her face._

_Do you want to? Her eyes seem to whisper._

_Of course she says back._

**00:00:00:59**

 

_“You make me happy.”_

_She can feel the words pressed into the back of her neck. The open window allows air to circulate in their room, her fingers holding on to Lisa as she back hugs her._

_“You make me so happy,” she murmurs._

**00:00:00:00**

 

_“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” - Henry Van Dyke._

 

 

* * *

 

 

**October 27, 2025**

“Mom!”

Jennie frowns, trying to keep her papers in one hand and in the other, being pulled relentlessly by her five-year-old. They’re at her school, it’s parent-teacher night and although she had made plans to leave the office early, considering she had left the duties at the law firm for Chaeyoung to handle, she had got caught up in a call that went on for much longer than she had hoped and _now,_ she was rushing to get inside the school because her appointment was at 5:30 and it was already 5:27. 

Well, according to June, they were already late, but the little girl had difficulty telling time so she didn’t know how reliable she could be. 

“Hurry, mom!”

She tugged on her hand, pulling her in the direction of a set of classrooms down a long narrow hallway. The walls were decorated in posters and full of colorful art creations. There were paintings, paper roll cylinders decorated in glitter, colorful windmills tacked on to the walls and googly eyes that followed Jennie and her daughter as they stumbled down the hall. 

She tried to look for her daughter’s name on some of them, trying to see if she could pinpoint any that might look like her work, but it was futile. 

“There! That’s my classroom!”

She pointed to a blue door decorated with a life-size cut out of Spongebob Squarepants smiling on the front. Jennie snorted and attempted to slow her down, pulling her daughter back so they were both standing just outside of the door. 

“Mom-”

“Wait,” she muttered. “At least, let me look presentable and like a functioning adult before I meet her.”

Jisoo, her nanny, was the one that usually picked up June from school because of Jennie’s work hours. It was nearing Halloween and this would be the first time that Jennie would meet her. Now that she had a second to think about it, it seemed pretty pathetic that they were already two months into the school year and she hadn’t seen the woman. 

From what June had told her, she was very tall, she laughed a lot, had blonde hair but was thinking of cutting it short and had asked her class if she should or not. Which was odd but Jennie just shrugged. Also, that she was really _really_ nice, something that Jennie had appreciated. 

“Do I look okay?” she asked her daughter. 

June squinted, staring up at her mother with those same dark chocolate eyes that she had gotten from her. Her hair was braided into two pigtails and tied off with two duck barrettes that she was obsessed with lately. She was still in her school uniform but her skirt was rumpled because she had been jumping up and down in the backseat when her favorite shark song came on. 

“You look pretty, mommy.” June smiled. “I would tell you if you looked bad,” she nodded seriously. 

Jennie laughed, bending down to kiss her on the cheek before sighing. “I know you would.”

When she stood up, she grabbed June’s hand and let her pull her into the room. If the door was any indication of what the room would look like, then Jennie was not surprised. The inside was decorated with Spongebob on almost every surface. There were Patrick themed name cards for the children, yellow banners hanging from the ceiling, a Bikini Bottom carpet in the corner surrounded by picture books and stuffed animals. It was all so childlike and Jennie took each area of the space in before her eyes landed on the teacher. 

“Ms. Manoban!” June shouted. “I’m here!”

Jennie was just about to scold her for yelling so loud, she always had difficulty using her inside voice when she wasn’t outside, but before she could, the woman turned around and Jennie swallowed whatever she was going to say. 

Their eyes meet and it’s like a weird unfurling opens inside of her chest. It’s light and airy and it’s so delicious that Jennie can almost feel it in the roof of her mouth and licking at every fiber of her being. It’s like a light flickering on inside of her and setting her skin ablaze with the force of a thousand suns. It burns at her insides in a way that it makes her squirm underneath the woman’s gaze. 

She’s so beautiful, she wants to tell her that, wants to whisper it to her but she feels out of breath. It’s as if the words that she wanted to say have all but vanished on her tongue. 

It’s exquisite, it’s electrifying, it’s so satisfying that she bites her lip to contain her smile. It’s useless, though because she sees, her eyes that had been trained on her face, catch everything. The woman with blonde hair that cascades down her shoulders and the bangs that are foolishly pulled back with a yellow pin, making Jennie laugh at the nervousness she felt only a few minutes ago, practically disappear. Her eyes that are dark like malt chocolate but wide and full of excitement, take her breath away. The sharp nose with a slight dent at the top, doesn’t even take away from her beauty, it only magnifies it tenfold. 

“I’m Lisa,” she smiles, her mouth stretching to reveal a set of perfectly straight white teeth.

 _Lisa, Lisa, Lisa._ Jennie moves the name around in her mouth, feeling her stomach bubble in excitement because the name sounds familiar but she just can’t pinpoint it. Maybe in passing at a coffee shop? Did she stop by her office one day and miss her? Had her name come across in any court files that she was working on? No, no that can’t be it. 

“Hi, Lisa,” Jennie says and the woman only smiles wider at that. “I’m Jennie, June’s mom. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Lisa crosses the room in three large strides because of her long legs and when she’s in front of her, it’s like the world stops spinning. The sunlight dripping through the window flashes over her shoulder and Jennie grasps her daughter’s hand tightly within her own, feeling as if she might faint if she doesn’t have something to ground her.

Lisa slowly, carefully, touches her hand that’s gripping the files that she has to read over tonight in her hands. Her fingertips skim across her knuckles, leaving goosebumps in their wake and Jennie takes a deep breath, her heart doing somersaults in her chest as she feels a smile, one matching Lisa’s, stretch across her own face. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you too,” she murmurs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for the kind comments and for reading my work! this has been one of the most enjoyable fics I have ever written and i'm sad but also happy to see this universe come to an end.  
> i also dug up my twitter from the dead, you can head over there if you want and be up to date on stories i'm working on, listen to me rant about blackpink, or read au's that I might turn into a fic one day. [rudesunyoung](https://twitter.com/rudesunyoung)  
> again, thank you guys so so much and i hope you enjoyed this fic.


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